


All the Things That He Is Not

by thisiszircon



Category: Hi-De-Hi!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 16:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10745805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: Jeffrey Fairbrother is a study in contradiction.





	1. The Calm Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to lost_spook for the excellent beta-reading.

**Monday**

"What's the matter with Gladys today?" Jeffrey asks Betty, as everyone else is filing out of the staff area following the morning meeting.

Betty is clearly more concerned with the way Sylvia is beckoning at her to hurry up.  "Er, nothing?" she answers.  "I think?  Sorry, Jeff – got to go."

He watches the troops leave for their scheduled activities.  Then he shrugs and returns to his office.  He stands there for a moment after he has closed the door, disconcerted by the silence.  This Monday is turning out to be an unusual day, and not just because of Gladys's distant behaviour.  Normally at this point in the morning there's a queue of people all wanting to complain at him about something.

The silence is broken by the sound of Peggy in the room beyond, humming to herself as she clears away the coffee things.  He smiles at this small restitution of order.  Perhaps the day will not be so unusual after all.

It is late August, 1959.  He has been the Entertainment Manager at Crimpton-on-Sea for seventeen weeks, and the season will close in less than a month's time.  The last two weeks will be quiet ones, given that the children will be back at school.  Jeffrey imagines it will be like it was in May, with mainly older couples and groups.  A lot less high-pitched shrieking around the pool; a lot more chalet-hopping.

Which reminds him–

Jeffrey glances at his in-tray.  Somewhere in its stacks of paper there is an envelope he has been ignoring for three days.  He is still wondering how to convey to his team the information set forth in this memo from head office.  How to do so without compromising what little dignity remains his own, anyway.

Joe Maplin, that bastion of moral judgement, is insistent that the content of his memo be announced to staff by local management.  He has gone so far as to require an acknowledgement from local management that it has been done.  Why?  Because there have apparently been some unfortunate consequences to dalliances between staff members and campers in other resorts.  One incident in particular has garnered rather unwelcome publicity and seems to have resulted in a hastily planned marriage.

Maplin therefore deems it necessary to advise camp staff that he has arranged for Durex's newer products to be available for sale in the small shop on site.

It's ridiculous.  Jeffrey suspects Maplin of deliberate provocation.  There is no need for this memo; what people spend their money on is no one's business but their own, staff or camper.  And no, he is not being puritanical in his attitude.  He happens to think that wider contraceptive availability is a sensible idea.  But for heaven's sake, can't one be _discreet_ about it?

The times seem to be changing at a dizzying rate.  Next year will see a brand new decade, and Jeffrey has the discomfiting impression that it will be a defining one.  Yet it doesn't seem so long ago that his mother was spitting feathers after finding a battered copy of Stopes's 'Married Love' secreted in his boarding school trunk.  (She never believed his story that it had been put there as a prank.  Which of course it had not.  Jeffrey is many things but he is not an accomplished liar; his mother is many things but she is not an idiot.)

Jeffrey huffs at the in-tray and decides that he can ignore the memo for at least one more day.

Outside the sky is powder-blue and cloudless.  The temperature is uncomfortably warm.  Jeffrey hangs his jacket over the back of his chair; at this late stage of the season his regard for the formalities seems to diminish further on a daily basis.  When he catches himself in the act of rolling up his shirtsleeves, he pauses and looks almost in alarm at his own forearms.

Just how much of a change has Crimpton provoked in him?

He is a different man now to the one who arrived back in April.  This makes sense.  The whole point of taking this job was to shake things up.  Prise himself out of that academic rut.

But there are changes that he neither foresaw nor wanted.  The biggest one, of course: he is now divorced.  (Almost.)  Signing the paperwork three weeks ago seemed to trigger a frantic process: giddying, given that his separation from Daphne had been stalled for over a year.  The court hearing took place last week and his solicitor has already taken receipt of the _Decree Nisi_.  The divorce will be finalised before Christmas.  Daphne is no doubt looking to a spring wedding with Tewkesbury.  All daffodils and green shoots and burgeoning romance.  Absolutely bloody charming.

He senses a curl to his lip, and puts the resentment aside.  He tries not to be mean-spirited.  It is sometimes difficult, though.

He supposes it's about time he starts thinking of himself as an unmarried man again.  This, alas, he also resents.  For eight years, now, Jeffrey has taken great solace in being married.  Compared to the demands of being single and searching for romantic attachment, marriage is – that is to say, _was_ – infinitely less like hard work.

Perhaps at nearly forty years of age he could excuse himself from further searching.  Would it really be expected of him?  Aside from cleaving to social norms, he sees no reason to bother.  He's hardly a hormone-addled Lothario any more.  (In fact, he is fairly sure he never was one.)  Marriage was more about security and career and doing-the-done-thing than it was ever about anything else.

Probably, he considers wryly, this is why Daphne ended up leaving him.

Before he becomes entirely morose, he alters his focus.  Hot sunny August days are poor context for introspection.

Gladys has left several neat piles of paper on his desk where he's not likely to ignore them.  (She has learned not to risk the in-tray; actually she learned this within three days of meeting him.  The thing with in-trays is that paperwork can get buried.  For example, appallingly ill-judged memos about condoms.)

One pile is the up-to-date logbooks from her Yellowcoat staff.  Her own is meticulously kept, with just the right amount of detail: numbers of attendees at her various events and classes; their demographic information summarised so that future events can be targeted at the most likely groups of campers; the current state of any equipment used; comments regarding potential expansions of popular activities.  The other books have been completed in a more desultory way: half-sentences, margin scribbles, indecipherable acronyms – at least, they'd be indecipherable if Gladys hadn't already gone through them and inserted her own notes for the purposes of translation.

He leans back against the desk and reads the latest entries through.  Most of the information has become familiar after seventeen weeks, but it is his job to support the entertainment staff.  He may be an aging divorcee with an ever-diminishing relationship with the formalities and an inability to speak without stuttering, but his sense of duty to his staff remains unsullied.

There's a knock at the door, which then flies open before he can call admittance.  Peggy bustles through, all nervous energy, shoulders hunched and one hand jammed in the pocket of her coverall.

"Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Fairbrother," she says.  "Only I thought I'd see if you want more coffee, 'fore I chuck the dregs."

Jeffrey considers to himself that, as tempting as dregs sound, he can probably give them a miss.  Out loud he says, "Thank you but no, Peggy."

"Right you are then," she says, smiling, eager, innocent.  He wonders if he's seeing things when he notes the sadness behind her habitual cheer.  It was only two weeks ago that he and Gladys had hidden in dunes and tried to ensure that Peggy's admirer was not about to take advantage of her trusting nature.

The twinge prompts him to ask, in as neutral a tone as he can manage, "Everything all right with you, then, er, Peggy?"

"Oh, fine, thanks."  She beams at him.  "I'm always fine."

She is no such thing.  Few of them are, here at the resort.

Sometimes Jeffrey gets very annoyed with himself.  His strong inclination is for propriety over connection, for keeping one's emotions to oneself.  But his intelligence and his tendency to think things through make him only too aware of all that he'd prefer to ignore: his emotional shortcomings and difficulties, and those of his colleagues as well.  It would, he decides, be much easier to be standoffish if one could also manage to be ignorant.

Rather than enter into any kind of meaningful dialogue with Peggy – something that would be inappropriate given his gender and his position of authority – he simply says, "Well i-i-it's good to see you smiling.  I know it's been a-a difficult couple of weeks for you."

She shakes her head at him, and the smile fades just a little, and she says, "You're a lovely man, Mr. Fairbrother.  We're very lucky to have you."

It seems wrong that such a small acknowledgement from him means so much to her.  But it isn't as if he can do more.  And even if he could, he would not; he is much less a 'lovely man' than Peggy believes.  Such men, for example, did not allow the likes of Joe Maplin to compromise their moral values on a semi-regular basis, merely for the sake of job security.

"Oh, er, Peggy," he says as she has turned to leave.  She looks back.  "I-is there something wrong with Gladys today?"

Peggy looks confused.  "Not that I know," she says.  "Seemed fine this morning.  Why?"  She frowns at him, suddenly stern.  "Did you put your foot in it again?"

"Of course not!"

She nods.  "Course not.  That's my job."  A shrug.  "I can ask her, if you like?"

"No, no.  No, er, no need.  Thank you.  Probably just worrying over nothing."

"Right then.  Back to it!  See you later!"

She rattles the door on its frame as she closes it, and moments later, with a _crescendo_ of rattling crockery, she departs the staff area with her trolley.

Silence descends again.  Jeffrey stops frowning blankly at the door and returns his attention to his desk.

The second stack of papers Gladys has left contains purchase requisitions.  They are each paper-clipped with a brief memo, pointing to the comments in the logbooks which prove the need for the replacement gear and including a note confirming that Gladys has been round to check each area to ensure the need is genuine.  She does this once a month.  She does it so well that the procurement department at head office has stopped trying to find reasons not to process the requests.

He takes a moment to admire the organisation of it all.  Every day, in a hundred ways, Gladys Pugh makes Jeffrey's job easier.  Which is a good thing, really, considering the dozen or so ways that – on the very same day – she can also make it trickier.

Alongside the requisitions is a neatly drawn plan: a smaller version of the chart on the wall showing each Yellowcoat's activity at any given time of any given day.  Gladys has drawn up the standard emergency wet-weather schedule, tweaked in accordance with this week's variables.  (Tracey is down with some kind of stomach flu, and Bruce sprained his ankle last changeover day, though he is managing relatively well on the crutches.)  There is a note clipped to the plan containing a single line: the BBC forecasts a storm later this week.

Jeffrey sits down, looking at this further example of Gladys's calm, practical efficiency.  He's been thinking about it a lot this last few weeks.  Since the meeting with Daphne, and the recognition that his life has undergone a fundamental change and therefore he needs to make proper choices regarding his long-term future, he has known it is likely he will not be returning to Crimpton next season.  This was never a career-change for him; this was a kick to his academic backside.  A palate cleanser between the heavy traditions and politics of Cambridge, and what might come afterwards.

And now he finds himself ever more firmly of the opinion that the resort could do a lot worse than giving Gladys the job of Entertainment Manager.  Oh, he's well aware that Ted would be holding out for it.  And Ted would be outraged if Gladys pipped him to the post: Ted's fond of Gladys, no doubt, but Ted is also an old-school chauvinist.

Still.  Gladys effectively taught Jeffrey how to do this job.  She guided him around and past his own misfires, earlier in the season.  She has it all: the administrative skills and the ability to connect warmly with the people who come to the resort.  Once you got past the awkwardness of employing a woman to a senior management position – and why was that even awkward?  Was this not the twentieth century? – the facts were the facts.  Gladys could do this job with her eyes closed.

He considers making the recommendation to Joe Maplin when he sends that letter of resignation.  Perhaps Gladys might forgive him his desertion if he engineers a promotion for her–

She won't, of course.  She'll never forgive him.

He tells himself this is a problem of her own making.  He has never encouraged her affection.  Apart, perhaps, from that drunken conversation the night his drinks were spiked...and yes, he remembers more about that than he ever claimed.  But he doesn't count that incident, because really, how can one be held responsible for one's behaviour after being unwittingly plied with far more alcohol than one would usually imbibe?  ( _In vino veritas_ , perhaps, but _veritas_ was a malleable thing, and always open to misinterpretation.)

She'll never forgive him.  It's just the way it is.

(He's annoyed by the twinge of remorse that this prompts in his lower gut.)

Jeffrey wonders whether it's the fact that the season is drawing to a close that has prompted Gladys's odd behaviour this morning.  Did she sense his restlessness?  Or is it more simple; is a depression stealing over her because the summer is ending and Pontypridd beckons, and the dark winter months away from her friends seem too much to bear?

Whatever it is, something is wrong today.  It isn't just that Gladys failed to use the time prior to the morning meeting to bustle about his office, and chat or flirt or bicker.  It isn't the way she was  looking elsewhere whenever he turned to request her input during the meeting.  (He's so used to how she stares at him that it actually feels odd, now, to glance her way and realise that he is not the object of her focus.)  It isn't even the way she failed to linger when everyone else had left the staff area, though all these things were aberrations to her usual pattern of behaviour.

Come to think of it, it was more about the way she allowed Sylvia to land a few well-placed barbs during the meeting and barely even reacted...

But everyone is allowed an off-day.  And it isn't as if Gladys's work is suffering, as demonstrated clearly by the paperwork organised on his desk.

Jeffrey pulls the telephone closer.  He might as well get on with these requisitions, before his presence is required beside the pool for whatever random body-part competition happens to be running this morning.  Knobbly-knees, lovely legs, hairy chest, Mr. Universe, Holiday Princess, That's Your Bum, belly button bloody bingo...passing judgement on the proffered flesh of strangers is not something Jeffrey Fairbrother will miss when he puts his career in the leisure industry behind him.

Of all that he has learned about himself, this last seventeen weeks, most obvious of all is that he is not an Entertainment Manager.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is not a public speaker.

This he resents very much.

While a boarder at Wellington, back in his middle teens, Jeffrey had one triumph: his appearance as Olivia in a performance of _Twelfth Night_.  He'd been mortified when cast, of course, since he'd been hoping to get Orsino, or at least one of the comic turns like Malvolio or Sir Toby Belch.  He'd thought he had a good chance, too, since he was one of the few boys in his year capable of memorising an entire Shakespeare play.

So when he was cast as Olivia – probably because he was shorter and more slender and less hirsute than many of his fellow boarders – he'd taken it as a personal slight.  (He'd been fifteen years old, and at that age everything is personal.)

As it turned out, it was one of the best things that happened to him at Wellington.  He learned his lines and did his best, because there were twenty other boys involved with the production and it would have been petulant in the extreme to spoil it for all of them.  And his Olivia was, astonishingly, very well received.  "Funny and poignant," said the review in _The Wellingtonian_.  He still had a copy of the magazine.  He remembered taking his bow at the end of each performance and hearing the applause and thinking, yes, this is what I want to do.  Even if it always means wearing these ridiculous dresses.

At Cambridge, part of the draw of that august institution had been the Footlights Dramatic Club.  He'd signed up in his first year, eager to participate.  This would be grown-up theatre, he'd decided.  Even if he started small, even if he was little more than a spear-carrier, he'd be involved.  He'd be available.  Perhaps he could understudy one of the more well-known performers.  Or he could write, even.  More and more through the thirties, Footlights had been moving away from traditional dramatic productions.  Topical playlets, revues...yes, he could see himself becoming instrumental in a new wave of Footlights success.

Jeffrey appeared in one single revue, and died on his feet, and could barely stand to look at himself in the mirror for weeks afterwards.  His writing was constantly rejected as being "Clever, certainly, Jeff, but we need more laugh-out-loud _funny_..."  His colleagues told him not to be downhearted because everyone died at least once, but he wasn't having it.  He knew why he had failed to perform: he had experienced a moment of epiphany on stage.

Jeffrey Fairbrother does not actually like being looked at.

He'd never processed the sensation at Wellington, maybe because he'd been so focused on remembering a considerable amount of iambic pentameter.  (And also, he'd been fifteen and wearing a dress, and had therefore put his acute sense of discomfort down to other mortifications.)  But at Cambridge, the attentions of a strange and judgemental audience had unmanned him.

He turned his back on Footlights in his second year, which did his academic progress the world of good.  But he never lost sight of that new self-awareness.  In any circumstance where the attention in the room is focused on him and him alone, Jeffrey falters.  He feels prickles of humiliation.  He stumbles through sentences that he was able to speak perfectly well to an empty room in practice.  He tries to compensate with bravado, feigned confidence, even arrogance, but it never really works.

Over and over again, he dies on his feet.

In this regard, his career in academia became something of a pay-off: his love of learning and his access to libraries and collections was weighed against the occasional need to give lectures and tutorials.  Unfortunately they have not yet invented a career for the academic that does not require speaking in front of an audience, at least on a semi-regular basis.  Damn it.

He'd hoped to cure himself of this malaise at Crimpton.  Grasping the nettle, so to speak.  It was always his self-consciousness that let him down, so he'd taken a job that forced him to nurture his inner extrovert.

It is galling, after four months, to acknowledge that his inner extrovert does not exist.

Still.  To the enquiring mind information is always useful, even when it disproves a much-desired theory.  His time at Maplins has demonstrated that he will never be gregarious.  It is not in his nature.  He'd have liked to discover otherwise, but there it is.

He has at least learned something about himself.

~~~

**Tuesday**

Gladys is still being distant.  It seems that she is set this way for the week.  Jeffrey isn't sure why this annoys and concerns him.  It isn't as if they are more than affable colleagues.  The word 'friend' would be misplaced, he thinks, to describe their relationship.

As would the word 'relationship', come to think of it...

He asks a couple of other people on his team whether they are aware of any ongoing problem with Gladys.  All of them express surprise at the question, none of them having noticed anything unusual; it's as if he's been seeing things.  So he doesn't make more of it than a shrug and a change of subject.  He is well aware of the rumours that surround him and his Chief Yellowcoat.  It's rather late in the season to add fuel to that fire, but if he has learned anything at all about his team it is the manner in which they will milk gossip for all that it is worth.

The notion of asking Gladys herself what is wrong does not occur to him.  He is not about to risk trapping himself in an emotionally honest conversation with her.

That way lies only disaster.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is not an athlete.  He never has been.

Oh, he likes sport.  Some sports, anyway.  He'll happily settle in on a sunny afternoon to watch a cricket match, especially if the activity is accompanied by a decent bottle of wine.  At Cambridge he could not claim the upper body strength to be a rower, but he never misses the coverage of the boat race.  Rugby holds less of an attraction thanks to the memories of boarding school and the pummelling he habitually took on the rugger field: something he still blames for the precarious state of his adult knees.  Solo sporting occupations like running are thus off-limits to him these days: a brisk jog down a high street to keep an appointment is enough to make his knees flare into pain and then give odd creaking noises with every movement for days afterwards.

He is not an athlete.  Not unless he is in a swimming pool.  Swimming is the one thing he can do quite well.  Ironic, perhaps, that he now resides at a holiday resort with a genuinely impressive Olympic-sized swimming pool available to him, free of charge, at his convenience.  And he has not felt able to use it even once.

He's been in it, of course.  Fully clothed.  Trying to put out a fire on a carnival float, as it happens.  But that was different.  To swim properly he'd have to don his bathing trunks, and his bathing trunks remain stuffed at the very back of the lowest drawer in his chest.  Exposing himself to that degree is simply unthinkable.  Not when he knows that there are people in the vicinity who would actually _look_.

While Jeffrey is no athlete, and while he has failed to take advantage of Crimpton's swimming pool throughout his tenure here, he quickly became aware that three cooked meals a day, of food that was often of the stodgier and plainer variety, might lead to issues with his weight.  One only had to look at Ted to see what season after season of a full English breakfast each morning might do to a man.

Jeffrey has had his own routine in place for most of the season.  He eats as sensibly as he can, and he begins each morning with the one form of exercise that remains an option for him: a brisk walk.

The landscape around Crimpton is quite picturesque.  While Essex lacks the drama of the south coast or the West Country, the beaches and coves within walking distance of the resort have plenty of charm.  Nearest are the dunes, which stretch for a good three miles to the west before they flatten into the wide spaces of the estuary.  Inland, to the north, the towns and villages are separated by a uniformity of patchwork farmland which does little to break up the horizon.  It's only at the shoreline where things get more interesting.  There is a coastal footpath heading east which takes in some gentle gradients and eventually offers cliff-top panoramas overlooking various bits of beach, all gleaming and golden with pale powdery sand.  There is a hidden inlet accessible by a steep path down from a rocky promontory: a classic smugglers' cove overlooked by most of the tourists.  It is the better part of an hour's walk from the resort, so Jeffrey doesn't go there regularly.  Gladys showed it to him, early in his tenure here, before he had learned to anticipate ulterior motives from her along with the offer of going for a walk and seeing the sights.

(More innocent times.)

His usual morning circuit is less adventurous.  He has never been an early riser.  He forces himself to rise in time to grab a cup of tea and a bite of toast and then head off for a half hour constitutional.  He'll go through the camp, around the pool, along the dunes and then skirt back via the playing fields.  It is enough to wake him up and to get his heart doing a little bit of work.  Along with his diet and his other day-to-day activities, the regimen seems to keep his weight reasonably steady.

Jeffrey is not an athlete, and he has no illusions about being in possession of film-star good looks, and at this point in his life he is perfectly ready to settle into middle-aged confirmed bachelorhood.  (Especially since he hasn't really been given a choice on that matter.)

But he is, as it turns out, vain enough not to want to get fat.

~~~

**Wednesday**

Jeffrey rises considerably earlier than usual after a fitful night of minimal sleep.  He has not suffered with insomnia for quite some time, and its reappearance surprises and irritates him.  He'd come to the conclusion that the long, busy days working at the resort render him too tired, each night, for anything to adversely affect his sleeping habits.

It would seem that a long, busy day is not always a guarantee of a restful night.

He is out of his chalet forty minutes before Gladys's voice usually wakes him up over the Radio Maplin speakers.  Rather than beg an early cup of tea from the canteen kitchens, he simply drinks some water and then starts his walk.  It is not yet seven o'clock.

At the pool, he notices a single early-morning swimmer ploughing steadily up and down.  He pauses for a moment to watch.  The swimmer prefers breaststroke, but not the half-hearted style that most swimmers at the resort employ, with their heads stuck determinedly out of the water, their mimsy little arm strokes, their horribly skewed kicks.  No, this is a strong breaststroke, unhurried but making the most of every pull and kick to maximise propulsion.  The symmetry in the technique is impressive.  It is a pleasure to watch.

Jeffrey has always been drawn to those people who can do a thing very well.  He admires Ted for his easy charisma, and Rodney behind the bar in the ballroom for his cocktail skills.  He once spent ten minutes watching, undistracted, as Lorna at the Happy Halibut sliced potatoes with breathtaking speed and efficiency.  (Maplin was threatening one of those chipping machines.  Lorna told him she could do it better and faster by hand.  Jeffrey ended up believing her.)

So it is not the fact that a lithe female body, clad in a bathing suit, has drawn his attention.  He watches – from a distance, because people are always so ready to assume the worst – as this swimmer reaches the far end, grasps the shelf with both hands, lifts up slightly and then plunges under the water in a turn.  She comes up swimming freestyle rather than breaststroke, but it isn't quite so much her stroke.  She has barely put on any speed from the technically perfect length she has just swum, in spite of the change to a faster stroke.

The swimmer is ten metres from the closer end of the pool when Jeffrey sees beyond the form and the swimming hat, and realises that he is watching Gladys swim.

He moves back further, taking cover beyond the loungers, walking again though keeping an eye on the pool.  He hasn't seen Gladys swim before.  Oh, he's seen her get in and out of the pool.  He's seen her do her keep-fit class in the water.  He's seen her play water polo, and have a splash about with the children.  But the pool isn't usually empty enough for genuine fitness swimming.  He wonders if she does this every morning, even before her ungodly early start to the day beside a radio microphone.

He knows that it is Sylvia who is the qualified swimming instructor on his staff.  And Sylvia has a swimmer's body: tall, streamlined, with almost disproportionately long arms and legs.  Yet on current evidence, Gladys Pugh could give his qualified coach a race and a half.  All five foot three of her.

He is walking away from the pool towards the sandy footpath leading to the dunes.  He tells himself not to turn back.  He can't risk her seeing him look interested.  Gladys does not need the sense of encouragement, as innocently as his attention might be intended.

He looks back anyway.

At the shallow end, Gladys has stopped swimming and is leaning over the edge, shoulders heaving with exertion.  Her head rolls on her neck, stretching muscles, then he sees her...well, sort of stutter, somehow.  There's a judder, a jerk to her frame, and her forehead slumps down to where her arms rest, hiding her face.

She's probably just worn herself out, he tells himself.  He quickens his steps towards the footpath.

It would be entirely inappropriate, he tells himself, to approach a woman clad only in a bathing suit and ask her if all is well.  So he doesn't look back again.

His chest hurts.  (Probably because he didn't get much sleep and hasn't yet eaten anything.  The sensible explanation is usually close at hand.)

It's none of his business, he tells himself, even if for that one moment Gladys looked as though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

He keeps walking.  The footpath opens out into the dunes, and the early morning sun warms his face.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother has never been much for friendship.

He doesn't consider himself to be a loner, mind you.  He likes company.  He enjoys a conversation with a like-minded individual.  While he is hardly an advertisement for conviviality he does not avoid human contact.

He supposes the problems began at boarding school.  He has vague recollections of very young friendships in his life, before he was shipped out to Caldicott at the age of seven, but those long-distant times verge on the mythical in his memory.

At prep school, and then at Wellington, he'd been a reserved, bookish, less-than-robust boy in an environment where hierarchy and sportsmanship and _braggadocio_ were all-important.  Unsurprising, really, that he had learned to appreciate his own company.  Alliances with other bookish types only reinforced the weakness and made him a more obvious target.  Alliances with stronger or richer or more forceful boys required transactions of some kind.  Jeffrey had still been a long way from puberty when he'd decided that he'd sort himself out and just get on with things.

University had been better.  He'd met genuine kindred-spirits.  Some even chiselled their way past his innate reserve.  Of course, his arrival at Cambridge had, unfortunately, coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War.  Not everyone he'd met in his first year had stayed, in spite of the conscription deferments.  More tragically still, some people he'd met had died young.  Some had put in three or four years for an undergraduate degree, only to die six months after their graduation.

Jeffrey's closest friend Teddy Osborne had died.  It happened one night in February 1942 during the infamous fires in Hills Road, when a second wave of German bombers had dropped explosives just where the first wave had lit the area up with incendiaries.  Jeffrey and Teddy had been fellow ARP volunteers – their student deferments might have excused them from combat but that didn't mean they didn't want to contribute to the war effort somehow – and they'd been called in to help fight those incendiary fires.

It had been pure luck of the draw that Teddy was in the wrong place when the second wave hit and Jeffrey was not.  More ARP officers had died that night than had survived.  Being one of those survivors is something Jeffrey still finds difficult to process, even to this day.

So perhaps the war put a stop to Jeffrey's late-blooming ability to form friendships.  It had been harder, after that, to commit to a real connection with another human being.  Not when such connections were so fundamentally fragile.  Friendship hurt when it was taken away from you.

Of course, the war ended almost fifteen years ago.  Plenty of time in between to put aside those fears and vulnerabilities...

And yet it would seem not.  Perhaps the ability to form lasting friendships is a skill learned only by the young.  Perhaps it is like becoming fluent in other languages: a task best suited to the youthful brain.  Whatever the nuts and bolts of it all, it hasn't worked out for Jeffrey.  By the time all the obstacles to friendship that were strewn in his path had cleared, he discovered he was no longer in a position to develop those skills.

When Daphne accepted his proposal of marriage, he'd thought it could be a brand new start for him.  He considers himself a modern man.  He approves of feminism and recognises the damage that patriarchal, parochial attitudes towards women have done to society in general.  Why shouldn't a man and a woman form a true and lasting friendship?  This he told himself, early in his married life: Daphne would not only be his wife, his lover, his partner in all things; she would be his friend.  He would understand her and she would understand him, and their lives would be the richer for that connection.  It would be the friendship that defined him.

Except it hadn't happened.

He still isn't sure why.  They had plenty in common, after all: their families had been friends for more than three generations; she understood the politics of Cambridge academia; she could converse with authority on any number of intellectually diverting topics.  And, the good Lord help him, he'd been genuinely fond of her.  Those times he'd said, "I love you," he'd meant it.  But somehow, in some indefinable way, the friendship just wasn't there.  He likened it to one of those join-the-dots puzzles in children's books.  The sequence was in place, the points were connected, the image had emerged.  The whole picture made a kind of sense in its reveal, yet somehow it was jerky and one-dimensional: thin and brittle and ultimately meaningless.

Now he is who he is: a man with few true friends and a depressing inability to change that.  He feels he ought to be at least comfortable with this, as he's grown comfortable with so many of his failings.  Occasionally, though, he gets to thinking that he's missing out on something basic, something essential to the human condition.

So he tries.  He still tries.  He uses the word, even when it doesn't feel entirely appropriate.  He dubs his colleagues and acquaintances 'friends' in the vaguest of hopes that if he says it enough times then he will surprise himself, one day, with the realisation that it has become true.

Jeffrey isn't given to forming friendships, but he wishes that he was.

~~~


	2. Stormy Weather

**Thursday**

It is Gladys's day off.  The Good Morning Campers programme today will consist of a pre-recorded message and then a reel of predictable tunes.  Jeffrey knows them by heart, now.

On this particular morning, however, he does not experience the programme from his usual position: in bed, groaning at the injustice of a job that requires cognitive function at such an early hour.  For the second night running he has been unable to sleep.

Gladys is not swimming today, even though he passes the pool at the same time as yesterday.  Quite right too, he tells himself.  One day off a week, and the rest of the time she's up with the dawn?  She deserves a lie-in.  Perhaps a day of relaxation will allow this awkward mood she is in to pass.

It's about time, Jeffrey decides, that he stops overthinking the situation with Gladys.  Whatever it is that has been the matter, it's her business and no one else's.  If she'd wanted advice or support then she would have asked for it.

He wonders whether it's his so-called 'prickliness' that has prevented her from seeking him out.  Theorising that this might be the case, he tries to congratulate himself on an overwrought conversation well avoided.  (It doesn't work.)

He walks further than usual, to use up the time he has in hand.  The early morning is hot and still, and in his solitude he feels unaccountably lonely.  Back in the camp, he showers and spends too long looking at his reflection with a mournful sense of dissatisfaction while he shaves.  He tries to jolt himself out of this mood but cannot seem to do so.  He admonishes himself to look to the future rather than focusing on this soon-to-be-done-with present.  But he is not sure about the future, either.

Should he go back to Cambridge?  He could do so, with a bit of grovelling.  It's certainly the safest option; the easiest option.  But would it make him happy?  He left for a reason.

Should he find a new university?  And if he did, would things really be so different?  Would it solve all the problems that made him so keen to leave Cambridge?  Would he even be able to _find_ a new position, given that Hugo Buxton maintains contacts and influence in Social Science departments across the country?  The Dean is already furious with Jeffrey for this summer in Crimpton; he'll be incandescent if he discovers that Jeffrey is returning to academia but as far away from Cambridge as he can get.

Should he find a dig somewhere, and lose himself in the process of archaeology rather than its theories and teaching?  Get his hands dirty, get his trowels and brushes working...now _this_ , this ought to excite him.  This was the very reason he pursued archaeology in the first place.  Peel back the layers, move through the years, uncover the evidence.

Jeffrey waits for the tingle of eagerness.  It doesn't happen.  He is bewildered by himself.

So should he try something else entirely new?  Entertainment manager might not have worked out, but there's a whole world out there.  He could try something that touches on his other interests: music, perhaps, or cuisine, or...

Damn it, maybe he should retrain as a bloody plumber.

At the noisy, clattery breakfast sitting he pushes porridge around his bowl and pretends he is not looking out for Gladys's arrival; she usually eats breakfast on her day off, even if she is taking the ten past nine bus for a day out in Colchester.

At the morning meeting, and in Gladys's absence, he finds himself short on both patience and good temper – two nights of poor sleep will do this to a man, and there's no reason to look beyond the sensible explanation – and he channels the feeling in order to remove a lingering problem.

"One last thing," he tells the team.  "There's been a memo.  I'm not going to read it out–"

"Oh, go on, Jeff.  You know we love it when you do!" Sylvia cajoles, then she looks a touch chagrined when he glares at her.  The team are not used to seeing him grouchy.

"Frankly," he goes on, "I-I-I'm appalled by the requirement even to, er, to, er, to make this announcement.  Unfortunately Maplin insists.  So here it is.  Prophylactic devices are now available for sale in the camp shop.  Do with that information as you wish – my duties have-have-have been, er, discharged."

Ted snorts.  "Unfortunate choice of word," he mutters to Spike, just loud enough.

Yvonne has turned her face away in disgust and is fanning herself with a sheaf of papers, as if she can waft the announcement out of the air before it touches her skin.

Sylvia and Betty are smirking, though Betty has the good grace to blush just a little.

Gary says, "Um, what's a pro-fill-acid?"

Sylvia says, "Condoms, darling."

Yvonne fans more energetically still.

"Oh, right," says Gary.

Sylvia catches Jeff's eye and asks, "And will the usual staff discount apply?"  She widens her eyes suggestively.  It is not the way he wanted this announcement to proceed.

Barry prevents him from needing to find a reply by drawling, "Since you'll be buying in bulk, dear, I'm sure Moira will cut you a deal."

Sylvia looks outraged.  Everyone else sniggers: everyone except Jeffrey, and of course Barry and Yvonne.  But Barry looks smugly pleased with the riposte.

Jeffrey calls the meeting to a close and heads for his office.  The memo is done with.  Oddly enough, his overriding thought in this moment is that he wishes Gladys had been there to see Sylvia bested by Barry.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is not romantically interested in Gladys Pugh.

At all.

He has eyes in his head, naturally; he can acknowledge her attractiveness.  Such things are hardly indicative of any kind of meaningful potential, though.  Human evolution coupled – no pun intended – with cultural stereotypes mean that certain things are always going to be attractive.  The brain is designed that way.  So the fact that a heterosexual man can look at a woman in her prime, curvacious of hips and bosom, with good skin and an evenness to her features, and find her attractive?  Hardly earth-shattering.

Jeffrey is also in possession of a reasonably normal male ego.  He is therefore not immune to the sneaking sense of gratification one gets upon realising that a woman has looked your way and found themselves pleased by what they see.  (Unfortunately for the woman doing the looking, such ego-driven pleasures tend to be smothered, in Jeffrey, by an accompanying surge of alarm.)

Gladys has been doing a lot of looking this season, and – apparently – a lot of being pleased.  But he's not interested.  He's quite adamant about that.

For most of his time at Crimpton he has been a married man.  Whatever the failings he can now recognise in himself, there is one thing as a husband he would never have condoned: infidelity.  The notion of taking his pleasure on the wrong side of the marital bedclothes would constitute, for him, the worst kind of betrayal of trust.  He was not going to be that man, not even while separated from his wife.

Jeffrey believes that trust, even more than love, is essential in a successful relationship.  You can, after all, love someone with all your heart and yet know, without doubt, that a relationship with that someone will not work because you cannot trust them in the way you need to.  In Jeffrey's view, a grounding of trust and affection might easily grow into love, but a grounding of love and passion along with an absence of trust will only grow into resentment and jealousy and pain.

This firm belief he has in the indispensability of trust and faithfulness is, of course, also the reason he held out for so very long against Daphne's pleas for him to cast himself in the 'blame' role of their divorce.  (That, and the fact that he didn't even want the bloody divorce in the first place.)  She was, in essence, asking him to volunteer himself as a bounder and a cad.  Even faked as the whole thing was, Jeffrey has some small amount of self-esteem to maintain.  His honour is important to him.  He never wanted to have court officials look at the paperwork his marriage has been condensed into, and to shake their heads in distaste at Jeffrey Fairbrother: philanderer.

Sometimes it astonishes him that this is what Daphne finally persuaded him to do.

In any case, with the issuing of the _Decree Nisi_ he is no longer a married man.  Infidelity is no longer a factor in any new association he might pursue.  And this...this discomfits him.

Prior to his divorce, he found it rather reassuring to have such an obvious and robust reason to avoid any other dalliance.  It gave him a feeling of security.  Untidy emotional entanglements were never on the cards because, quite simply, he was an honourable man who did not cheat.

Access to this nice, reassuring argument has now been snatched away from him.  He's quite cross about this.

Still, none of it changes the fact that he is not romantically interested in Gladys.  It is not as if he has been waiting for the freedom his divorce grants him in order to surrender to some latent passion he has harboured for her.  If he has dreamed of her a few times, that is scarcely relevant: the unconscious mind throws up all kinds of detritus when one is asleep, and Jeffrey is no more convinced by the significance of an occasional dream about Gladys Pugh than he would be if he were to find himself dreaming of Fred Quilley.

And if it is certainly the case that there are aspects to Gladys that he respects, admires and has even garnered something of a fondness for, none of that adds up to romantic interest, does it?  After all, for every moment she impresses him with her practicality or her charm, there's another moment she infuriates him.  Her imperiousness when she bests him in an argument can be very trying.  Her tendency to be overbearing with the other female Yellowcoats can be hard work, even though it clearly comes from a need for validation.  Her cultural appreciations are limited and sometimes laughable, and even _this_ annoys Jeffrey because he can acknowledge that while Gladys's education was less extensive than his own, there is a genuine intelligence there.

Of course, that constant barrage of looks and comments and innuendo is also something he could well do without.  Although it's odd: for some reason the last couple of weeks have seen such things diminish to the point where they're practically not there any more...and no, he isn't missing them now they're gone, but he's noticed the change and he's wondered what caused it.  That is all.

None of this changes the central issue, however.  He is not interested.  And even if he were, it could obviously never work.  Relationships require common ground, do they not?  He and Gladys share no such thing.

Everything else besides, he'll leave Crimpton in mid-September and most likely never see her again.  So what would be the point?

~~~

It is only when he sees Gladys step off the local bus at the camp gates early that afternoon that he puts it together.  She is wearing a familiar grey and claret suit and her best hat.  She clutches her handbag in hands that are gloved.  She has, he realises, been to church.

There are no public services on a Thursday at the local churches in Little Crimpton, Thorpe or Buxted Magna.  She hasn't had time to go all the way to Colchester and back again.  Therefore Gladys must have attended a nearby church simply for herself.  And while her faith is real and consistent, at least as far as Jeffrey has been able to ascertain, she is far from devout.  She is not even a regular at the Sunday prayer service in the camp.  (Of course, her claims of being "strictly chapel" might explain the absences.)

Suddenly all of Jeffrey's half-formed theories about Gladys's distance this week are swept away.  Whatever has been bothering her, it is not about the end of the season.  It is not about female biological cycles.  It is not about _him_.

Someone has died.

Given that she has bothered to attend a church, it must be someone who was close to her.  And given that she did not approach him earlier in the week to request compassionate leave, it is not a recent bereavement.  He deduces, therefore, that Gladys is mourning the anniversary of a loss.

Jeffrey understands this.  He always has a low point in early November, at the anniversary of his father's passing.

He watches from a distance as she walks up the access road, her gait stiff and tired, though she still nods and smiles and chats with any campers who hail her.  He watches as she turns towards the staff chalets.  He watches until she is out of sight.

It's hard to know what to do.  He can scarcely rush up to her and say, "Gladys, I see you are grieving.  Allow me to offer some badly chosen words of condolence."  Because that would be all he _could_ offer.

He finishes with the prize-giving for the kiddies' gala.  He walks back to the office, feeling fretful and on edge.  It bothers him that Gladys did not choose to confide her circumstances.  She only needed to tell him, "By the way, Jeffrey – I might struggle a bit this week.  It's a sad anniversary for me.  Just to let you know."  And he could have said, "I'm sorry to hear that, Gladys.  You know where I am, if you need anything..."

Of course, he wouldn't have said that.  He'd have stuttered his way through an awkward acknowledgement, hoping with every syllable that he was making it plain how little he wanted to know the details.  And Gladys, who would have been at a low ebb in any case, would have been given proof incontrovertible that her closest colleague was more concerned with keeping her at arm's length than with offering some basic human sympathy.

And if she had predicted the exchange in the same way he just has, it would readily explain her silence on the issue.  So much for Jeffrey Fairbrother, the decent and good and 'lovely' man.

In the office he rattles about for a few minutes, filing papers, straightening folders, kicking furniture.  Then he gives in and does what he wants to do.

Gladys's confidential personnel file is in the locked cabinet to the left of his desk.  He has not looked at it before; he's never needed to.  The paperwork offers her mother's name and contact details under the 'Next of Kin' section.  This seems significant, since most unmarried people use their father's name here if both parents are alive.

He reads further, consumed by a hunger for detail that surprises him.  Gladys's date of birth is May 1925: eight years earlier than she stated on her competition submission last month when that position in the Bahamas was up for grabs.  She left school at the age of fourteen.  Fourteen!  He'd only finished his first year at Wellington by that age.

Feeling strangely unscrupulous – this paperwork is his province, he reminds himself, because he _is_ the senior manager on site – he turns to the back of her file and is astonished to discover a disciplinary note.  In 1952, during her first season at Crimpton-on-Sea, Gladys was reprimanded for having returned to the camp a day late following leave to return home.

In late August.

Jeff tut-tuts and puts the file back where it belongs.  He locks the cabinet and sits himself down.  Of course, he can well imagine how it all played out.  Gladys gets the awful news from her mother.  She requests leave to attend the funeral, and her manager at the time plays by Joe Maplin's inflexible rule of two-days-maximum.  But she has to get all the way across the country, east to west, which is a day's travel via London each way.  So she gets home, buries her father – at least, Jeffrey is assuming it was her father – and then returns to work on the earliest day possible.  Even though, in an ideal world, she should have been given the whole week to spend with her mother so they could come to terms with their loss.

Joe Maplin, Jeffrey thinks to himself, is a thoroughly reprehensible human being.  And this manager from 1952, Henry Pritchard, who wrote and signed the disciplinary note, is no better.  Pritchard could and should have stood up for her.

Jeffrey would have stood up for her.  And to blazes with Maplin's threats about job security.

His chest is hurting again.

(He really needs to get some proper sleep tonight.)

~~~

Half an hour later he has decided on one small thing that he can do to show some support and sympathy.  Jeffrey goes to the back of the kitchens and persuades Doris to make up a tea tray.  With biscuits.  (He suspects Gladys missed lunch as well as breakfast.)

Armed with this, he walks along the row of chalets to her door.  The curtains are drawn, though this is not unusual: the chalets are the most awful heat-traps in this sweltering weather, and in any case all of the staff here value the illusion of privacy.

Jeffrey knocks before he can second-guess himself.  There is a pause before the door is opened.  He has already practised his explanation: "Hope I'm not interrupting – thought a cup of tea might be just the thing."  But the sentence is arrested before he is even halfway through the word "Hope..."

Peggy blinks at him from the doorway.  "Why are you bringing me tea, Mr. Fairbrother?" she asks.  It would be a reasonable question, were it not for the fact that she seems to be alone in Gladys's chalet.

"Where's, er, where's, er," he manages to say.

Peggy rolls her eyes.  "Course.  You'll be looking for Gladys."  She sniffs.  "She's not here."

He can see that.  He gives up on words and just arches his brows in question.

"Oh, I'm just dropping off some cleans," Peggy assures him.

This is less useful information than Gladys's current whereabouts.  It seems he needs words after all.  "Where is Gladys at the moment?" he asks.

"She went for a walk.  Said she wants to clear her head."  Peggy frowns.  "Seemed a bit down in the dumps, now I think about it."  She perks up a bit.  "I'll have the tea if you don't want it yourself."

He hands the tray over with no more than a diffident frown, because his focus is elsewhere.  Gladys has gone out walking.  He knows where she'll be heading: the smugglers' cove beach where she can be assured of some peace and quiet.  This would be perfectly fine, except for one thing.  The BBC has forecast a summer storm to roll in this afternoon.  The heat outside has that oppressive, stagnant quality that signals an oncoming storm to break it up.  There are already ominous dark clouds to the east.  Gladys ought to be well aware of this, since she was the one who prepared the contingency schedule earlier in the week.

Inside Gladys's chalet he can see the grey and claret outfit hung up on the wardrobe door.  Hopefully she at least put on more sensible walking clothes...

...but she didn't take her coat.  Her beige mackintosh, made infamous as far as Jeffrey is concerned thanks to a night spent in the Three Bears Cottage, is hung on its peg on the back of the door.

"Oh no," he says.

"No?" Peggy asks, with her mouth full of biscuit.

"There's a storm coming," he says.

"Don't be daft.  Blue skies all the way, out there."  Peggy sticks her head out of the chalet and looks up.  "See?"

Hardly a conclusive argument, since the only patch of sky visible from this position is that which is directly overhead.

"The weather forecast predicts a storm.   A bad one.  And Gladys does not have her coat."

Peggy considers.  "Maybe she just went for a short walk."

Gladys did nothing of the kind.  Distracted by her sadness, needing to escape the constant requirement to wear a smile and project good cheer, desperate for some solitude, she'll have set out for a small, unfrequented beach a good mile and a half away.

"When did she leave?" he asks.

"Ohh, I'm not sure.  Twenty, thirty minutes ago?"

He thinks.  He wishes that problem-solving was his _forté_.  It is not; it is Gladys's.

"I'm going to requisition the groundsman's van," he decides.  The road down past Jayford Holiday Park ends about five minutes' walk from the rise overlooking the beach.  "I can be there i-in fifteen minutes or so."

Peggy tilts her head to one side.  "Is this an emergency?"

"Only if the weather forecast is right."

She snorts.  "Big 'if'."

"Even so.  Could you hand me Gladys's coat?"

Peggy seems to take some cue from Jeffrey's tension.  She unhooks the raincoat and passes it to him.  Then she squares her shoulders and says, "Go and sort out the van.  I'll meet you there in five minutes with a thermos.  You might need a thermos."

He nods and moves away, to go and find Roger McDonald, the groundsman for the camp.  Who, at just gone three o'clock in the afternoon, will be slurping tea of the bitterest brown in his toolshed close to the stables.

Jeffrey is perfectly well aware that he could be worrying over nothing.  But still, after the oppressive stillness in his dealings with Gladys all through this week, he has the intuitive sense that it is time the summer storm broke through.

~~~

He waits for Peggy, sitting on the bench-seat in the front of the van with the driver's door open, trying to lose some of the sauna-like heat that was trapped within.  He is attempting to reacquaint himself with the dashboard and controls.  It's a long time since he has driven a vehicle.  Driving was never necessary in Cambridge.  Even beyond the confines of that university city, Jeffrey has always managed perfectly well with railway and taxi services.

He learned to drive during the war, when he was in the ARP.  Perhaps he still associates steering wheels and gearsticks with that time; perhaps that is why he is such a nervous driver.

Ted's voice hails him as he contemplates the dashboard-mounted gear lever alongside the steering wheel.  "Going somewhere, Jeff?"

He startles and looks out of the open door.  Ted's face is shiny with sweat, as it has been all week.  Ted will not relinquish the loud checkered suit, even in weather such as this.  He's probably willing the storm to break as soon as possible.

Jeffrey is not about to explain his rescue mission to anyone else at the camp.  Bad enough that Peggy knows.  He simply says, "I-I may be out for a while.  You'll need to do the treasure hunt prizes yourself.  If I'm not back in time for the, er, the ballroom, you know the schedule."

It is almost half past three in the afternoon.  Evening entertainment in the ballroom does not begin until half past seven.  It will not take four hours to collect Gladys from the beach and return her, safe and hopefully dry, to the camp.  However, four months at Crimpton-on-Sea have taught Jeffrey that his plans rarely pan out the way he intends.  Contingencies seem sensible.

"Right," Ted says.  He frowns.  "Family emergency?"

"There's somewhere I need to be," Jeffrey says vaguely.  "Might be nothing."

"Need help, pal?"

Jeffrey pauses.  The question is honestly meant.  Ted is self-serving, manipulative and capable of bending rules to breaking point, but the man has a good heart.

"I think I can manage," Jeffrey replies, and then winces.  It sounds like a snippy dismissal, and he didn't intend it that way.  Sometimes the words that come out of his mouth sound all wrong.  He is not emotionally astute enough to prevent it, though he is just astute enough to recognise it when it happens.  He adds, "I, er,  I-I-I very much appreciate the offer."

"Right then!  Well, I'll go and round up Spike.  Not to worry, Jeff – we'll be fine here.  Just do what you have to do."

Jeffrey nods.  The idea that this camp would fall apart without his presence is infinitely more laughable than Ted is suggesting.  "Well, quite right.  It's not as if you need me," he agrees, attempting a self-deprecation that will hopefully raise a wry smile.

Ted looks at him for a long moment: _too_ long, for a look between male acquaintances, at least as far as Jeffrey's senses are calibrated.

Then Ted says, "Oh aye?  Feeling a bit sorry for ourselves, are we?"

Jeffrey bristles.  "Not as such."

Ted ignores the comment.  "Listen, pal.  We don't need you this evening.  Not if circumstances call you away.  But Jeff..."  Ted leans closer.  "Last season Bavistock skimmed three hundred quid off various budgets.  That's when he wasn't assaulting two female campers and almost getting us shut down when he changed the pool maintenance contract to favour some cowboys working out of Clacton."

Jeffrey is aware of Mr. Bavistock's history.  Mr. Bavistock is, after all, currently serving time at Her Majesty's pleasure.

"That's not all," Ted goes on.  "Season before, Jim Price ended _his_ two year tenure as Entertainment Manager by telling all the female Yellowcoats what it would cost for him to write them a decent testimonial."  Ted shoots Jeffrey a significant look, as if the comment requires further emphasis or explanation.  "This after a season spent mainly under the influence of gin and bitters.  Jeff – the man's breath!  If _I'm_ noticing it, it's a problem, right?"

"Ted," he says, trying to bring the conversation to a halt.

It doesn't work.  "And before that – Henry bloody Pritchard.  Joe Maplin's yes-man.  Nasty piece o' work.  Sent here on a mission to prove that we could run the camp with half the staff we had.  Honestly, the things that man..."  Ted stops abruptly.  "Point is, Jeff, it's been a hell of a thing, this season.  Having an Entertainment Manager that gives a damn?  Supports the team?"  He shakes his head.  "Breath of fresh air, it's been."

"I was under the impression that you wanted the job yourself," Jeffrey points out, mainly because he is touched, and he is very bad at dealing with the sensation.

"Might have done.  Earlier in the season.  But I think I'm better doing what I do."  Ted smirks.  "Lot less scrutiny, when you're the camp host.  Get away with a lot more."

"Perhaps," Jeff agrees.  It's far too late in the season to start kicking up more fuss about Ted's various fiddles.

Ted reaches into the van and claps Jeff on the arm.  "You're the best manager we've had.  No question.  Just 'cause the bar wasn't set that high doesn't change things.  This season's been different.  I think it might have been the best we've had, here."  He shrugs his checkered shoulders.  "Think on that."

He marches off again before Jeffrey can muster a reply.

Jeffrey tuts to himself and reminds himself of his most recent debacle on a makeshift stage in front of a microphone.  It is quite plain to him that he does not belong here.  The fact that the managers preceding his time at Crimpton all had their own failings is hardly his concern.

Peggy bustles up while he is still trying to work out how he feels after Ted's unexpected pep-talk.  She pushes a bag at him through the open door.  "Tea," she announces.  "And a blanket, in case the rain starts and Gladys got cold."  She looks cautiously up at the sky.  The wind is picking up now, and to the east the blue has turned to dark grey, even though the sun still shines overhead and the air still stifles.  "Oh," she adds, "and some Kendal mint cake."

"Mint cake," Jeffrey repeats as he stows the bag in the footwell on the passenger side.

"They use it when they rescue lost people.  I think.  For energy."

He manages not to laugh, because it would be impolite.  "I-I'm not about to head up the Cumbrian fells, Peggy," Jeffrey points out.  "Just a mile and a bit along the coast."

Peggy frowns.  "Well if you don't need it then I'll have it back after."

He nods.  "I should get going.  Peggy–"

"I know.  No one's business but your own."  She leans in, lowers her voice.  "They like to talk, round here."

Peggy likes to talk too.  The one thing that Jeffrey can guarantee right along with his staff's tendency to gossip is the way they will all claim to do nothing of the sort.

"Thank you," he says, even though he is convinced that Peggy will be telling one of their colleagues of his purpose within ten minutes of this conversation.  In the strictest confidence, of course.

"For the record, though, Mr. Fairbrother?  Ohh, it's ever so romantic."  She grins at him, gives him the thumbs-up and a less-than-subtle wink, and she's away towards the chalet blocks again.

Ah well.  Peggy's delusions can't be helped.  He has a Chief Yellowcoat to find, preferably before she gets drenched.  He closes the van door, starts the ignition, and is inordinately proud of himself when he manages to move off down the access road without stalling first.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother does not really consider himself a sexual being.

He's no virgin, of course.  He was married for eight years, even if that marriage has now rather unequivocally come to an end.  For almost seven of those years he and his wife shared a house and, most nights, a bed.  He fulfilled his marital duties in that regard.  It isn't even as if he found the process unpleasant.

He isn't so arrogant as to declare any kind of superior skill when it comes to lovemaking.  But he'd probably claim an average competence, at the least.  Prior to his marriage he did what any good academic would do, and he researched.  Marie Stopes was helpful.  So was D. H. Lawrence.  Jeffrey has not been able to indulge all of the more colourful variations on physical love that his research introduced him to, but he takes pride in the way he made damn sure that, come his wedding night, he was armed with enough knowledge to treat his wife well.

He always tried to make Daphne happy in bed.  He tried to make himself happy too.  The problem is that sex has always seemed to Jeffrey like something that is wildly, absurdly overrated.

The true pleasures in life are manifold.  Some of them Jeffrey couldn't imagine living without.  There is, for instance, a small Italian restaurant in Bedford that cooks a proper Tuscan _Pappa al Pomodoro_ that suffuses the palate and warms the chest.  If someone were to tell him that he could never again taste that dish then he would have to contemplate the possibility that life had been rendered unbearable.  Because for Jeffrey, _that_ was pleasure.  If one managed to couple an excellent meal with excellent company – conversation, wit, shared topics of interest – and garnish the experience with a bottle of wine filled with complex, subtle flavours that bring out the very best of the food they accompany?  Offer all this, and Jeffrey is a happy man.

Then there are the other great pleasures: music, theatre, literature, laughter.  All the things that can alter one's state, make one think, make one feel understood.  _Those_ are necessary.  Those constitute _sine qua non_.

But a short episode in a darkened bedroom, never quite sure whether your touches and cajolings are being well-received or simply tolerated as a means to an end?  When body temperature never seems to be at a comfortable level?  When furniture protests creakingly at the gentlest of movements?  When the strain to achieve orgasm only leads into an entirely new set of issues involving stickiness, and a need to remove oneself from the warmth of one's bed such that one might freshen up and thus return to one's partner without risking offence...all of which, it seems to Jeffrey, utterly negates the supposed post-coital relaxation which the act of lovemaking was rumoured to engender...

Honestly?  He just doesn't see the point.

Well, all right.  Procreation, obviously.  There's a point there.  The human species is driven towards the goal of perpetuation, and God in His wisdom (or biology in its natural design, depending on how far Jeffrey's occasional tendency towards agnosticism has gone on any given day) has decided that this is the process.  He and Daphne discussed the question of children in the earlier years of their marriage, of course.  Daphne was not overly keen on the idea, and Jeffrey himself was nowhere near concerned enough with the conservation of his genes to do anything other than accept this choice.

But besides the notion of reproduction, which some people clearly considered important, what _was_ the point?  There were better aids to sleeping well.  There were more reliable pleasures in life.  And even if modern films seemed to be placing an ever greater importance on issues of romance and intimacy, then what did that matter to him?  For every _Brief Encounter_ there was the comfort of a Sherlock Holmes story.  And Holmes was, ever, the most iconic representation of the asexual being.

It is not the case, of course, that Jeffrey is oblivious to the attractiveness of the female form.  His preference for attractive women over attractive men convinced him, quite early in his adulthood, that his issue with intimacy was not a simple case of homosexuality.  And as a bundle of pubescent hormones Jeffrey had discovered masturbation with the same enthusiasm most fourteen year old boys have employed for generations untold.

But he got over that.  He can't even remember the last time he took himself in hand, so to speak.  And while it is never a chore to cast his eye over Sylvia and Betty in their two-piece bathing suits, or indeed to notice the voluptuousness of Gladys's curves, these visions of feminine loveliness fail to prompt in him more than a vague aesthetic admiration.

And when they are directed towards him with a response most definitely in mind they lose their attraction.  Sylvia's rather bruising kiss in the Punch and Judy tent, or her clumsy attempts at bodily caresses in the haystack?  Gladys's heaving bosom and smouldering eyes?  It is as if his capacity for attraction begins and ends with intellectual appreciation.  Distance and separation are key.  Take it further, demand some interaction from him, and his interest vanishes.

It confuses Jeffrey that women occasionally look at him and fail to notice the absence of sexual interest.  Or sexual charisma.  Or sexual anything, really.

He has come to the conclusion, therefore, that he is not a sexual being.  All the evidence points to this.  And frankly, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

In fact, one would hope that it will make the rest of his adult life simpler and easier.

~~~

Last Tuesday night was a full moon.  That means that the tides today are spring tides.  Jeffrey has learned more about such things since living at the resort than he ever thought he'd need to know.  He still remembers an annoyed sense of astonishment upon learning that spring tides are not restricted to springtime.

He picks his way down the rocky path leading from the cliff-top to the beach.  High tide was just after midday, and the water is breaking on wet sand a good fifty yards or so down the beach now.  But he has to be careful.  The high line of the recent spring tide has deposited seaweed all over the rocks at the end of the path.

Jeffrey does a quick calculation.  Next high tide will be after midnight.  He is in no danger of being trapped by the water.

He couldn't see Gladys from the overlook, but he is certain she is here.  The single other time the two of them were here together was in May this year.  Gladys had stood here, hair ruffling in the breeze off the sea, gazing into the distance.  She'd told him that it's good to have somewhere to come where you know you'll get some time to yourself.  Then she'd smiled at him and added, "Or somewhere you can at least choose the company you keep."

He hopes she won't begrudge his company on this day.

The small inlet is sheltered by cliffs on almost three sides.  The dark clouds now racing in from the east are not visible from this position, and the brisker wind that has been picking up is only obvious out to sea where the waves are being whisked to a choppy white.  Jeffrey stares at his feet as he navigates seaweed that has thankfully dried out in the still, hot air since high tide.  He makes it down to the sand without incident.

Out of the wind, his tweed jacket immediately feels too warm.  The split-personality of today's weather is giving him a headache.

Jeffrey turns away from the view down to the water, and follows the bottom edge of the cliff around to his left.  He sees her as soon as he has rounded a cascade of rock pools thick with more seaweed.  Further up the slope, sitting on soft sand so pale it is almost white, knees lifted in front of her and surrounded by her arms, Gladys is adrift in thought as she listens to the distant sound of the waves.

His chest aches at the vision she presents.  But he feels a sense of relief, too.  He has found her, and before the heavens open.  Mission almost accomplished.

Walking across the soft give of the sand is hard work.  When he reaches her he is slightly out of breath.  She does not turn her head.  He has already cleared his throat once, trying to warn of his approach, not wanting to startle her out of her reverie, but she seems to be entirely removed from this location.

She is wearing the ivory coloured sundress with the tiny blue flower print and the sleeveless straps, underneath a light cardigan.  Her legs are bare; her feet are encased in sandals.  There is nothing in her outfit that might have protected her from a downpour.

"Hello Gladys," he says, trying to sound as if it's mere coincidence that they have run into each other like this.

There's an awkward moment when he wonders whether he is going to have to touch her in order to make her aware of his presence.  Then her shoulders move with the most heartfelt of sighs.  Without looking his way, Gladys says, "It's my day off, Jeffrey.  It couldn't wait?"

It takes a few seconds for him to work out the conclusion she has jumped to.  "Oh!" he says, and gives one of his more awkward laughs.  "No, I'm, er, goodness me.  I'm-I'm not here for work!"

Another moment.  Then she turns her head and looks up at him.  Her eyes are dry and not red-rimmed at all, for which he is grateful.  Weeping women terrify him.

"So you've followed me all the way out here," she says, "on my day off, when it's obvious I want some peace and quiet...and you don't even have a good reason?"

He was not anticipating her hostility, as quietly as it is offered.  Jeffrey has become accustomed to Gladys's constant and unquestioning support and loyalty.  To be on the receiving end of anything else from her feels uncomfortable.  Unfamiliar.

He takes her raincoat from over his arm and offers it to her.  "I, er, brought you your coat."

She arches a brow at him.  With that one gesture, Jeffrey is given a multitude of responses:

 _Why?  The sun is shining and the sky is clear._  
_You've been rifling through my personal property in my private chalet?_  
_This is a good time to finally show a bit of interest and concern, is it?_

He coughs.  "There's a-a storm coming.  You mentioned it earlier in the week."

"The forecast must have been wrong."

"It wasn't.  The sky is black, over to the east."

A brief frown.  She obviously had not noticed.  Then she sighs again and takes her coat.  "Fine.  Thank you for the warning.  Don't let me keep you."

He nods and almost lets her dismiss him.  Then he pinches at his brow and says, "I've, er, I've got the van.  Just at the top there.  If you want a lift back."

Gladys closes her eyes, as if she is silently searching for patience.  Then she says, quite level of tone, "Jeffrey, I will freely admit that there have been times, this last few months, when this much attention from you would have thrilled me to bits."  She looks up at him, sharp and unhappy.  "Please understand that this is not one of those times.  I'm not good company today.  So please leave me alone."

The rejection is hard to take.  "I-I was worried you might get caught in the rain," he tries to explain past the lump in his throat.

"It won't be the first time I sit on this beach and watch the rain," she says.  Her voice is becoming harsher.  She tips her head back, indicating a bit of the cliff behind her, up the last slope of sand, and Jeffrey realises that she is right: a hollow under an overhang in the base of the cliff provides a perfect shelter from any shower.

She didn't need her raincoat.  She didn't need him.  He has only made things worse.  Jeffrey has no idea why this whole silly situation is bothering him so much.  He suspects it has something to do with the fact that he has been rejecting Gladys in similar ways all season, and he's never considered until now how that might have hurt her.  He has been – perhaps rather selfishly – focused on his own various discomforts.

He shakes the thoughts away and puts down the bag next to Gladys.  "There's a flask of tea in there," he says.  "Might come in handy, if you end up camping out for the duration.  I'll, er, see you later then."

"See you later," she breathes, looking away, looking upset.

Something cold and horrible splatters over his head.  He looks up, expecting to see a smug seagull flying off, immediately furious that the oppressive heat made him forsake his usual hat.  But his fingers come away clean, if wet.  He's still staring at them when another splatter hits him, and the sound of the breaking waves is masked by a low-pitched hum that springs up all around.

Rain.  It is raining.  He glances up, to see dark clouds skidding across the sky.  The sun, slightly over to the west, will soon be cast in shadow.

He looks at Gladys, wondering if she will change her mind about staying.  She has already stood up and is gathering the bag, her raincoat and the small shoulder bag she already had with her.  She turns and marches up to the shelter of the not-quite-a-cave.  Jeffrey is clearly not invited.

He surrenders, turns and hurries off.

The rain seems to pound harder with every step.  Somewhere behind him he hears the rumble of thunder, though he saw no lightning and cannot therefore judge the distance.  He skirts the rock pools, their surfaces dancing with the bombardment of raindrops.  The heavy sand is threatening to trip him up.

He feels humiliated, and he is not sure why.  He wants to get away.  He doesn't want others seeing him like this.  He will get back to the van and sit there for a while, in the hope that the rain might ease off.  He doesn't want to drive through a storm.

He reaches the rocks at the foot of the path up the cliffside.  Being out of Gladys's sight gives him the chance to pause, catch his breath, rub at the rain on his face.

He honestly doesn't know why he feels so upset.  He just knows that this is what he feels.

Water is running down behind his shirt collar and making his back flinch with the cold trickles.  His hair is already soaking.  His jacket is absorbing a good proportion of the rainfall: Harris tweed is excellent protection in wet weather, but it absorbs rather than repels.  He can almost sense it getting heavier, and he knows it will take an age to dry out.

Enough pausing; he needs to hurry.

His foot skids backwards when he tries to take a step up on to the rocks.  His weight plunges forwards, and his arms come up to protect his face.  He cries out in shock, and then in pain.  He'd forgotten about the seaweed, just as he'd forgotten that seaweed, when wet, is a slipping hazard unrivalled by even the most well-placed banana peel.

Fortunately the rocks offer him less distance to fall.  He pushes himself upright again.  His right shin hurts where he knocked it against the edge of a rock.

He brushes himself down and stares belligerently at the seaweed-strewn rocks.  There is no way to access the rest of the path except over these green and slimy obstacles.  He must find a way to navigate them, but his shoes are his usual brogues, the soles worn shiny with use, and they offer no grip.  Tentatively, he tries to place his right foot on the flattest part of the lowest rock, then he tests it with his weight.  It threatens to slide off with the merest hint of a push.  Hastily he snatches his foot back.

He considers taking off his shoes and socks.  Perhaps he can get past the first rocks barefoot, then replace his shoes and get the rest of the way up to the top.  He decides to try it, since the only alternative would seem to be going up backwards on his rear end.  There are some indignities Jeffrey is unprepared to endure.

He is about to bend down to untie his laces when something grabs at his arm and yanks him away.  He is about to complain, or yelp, or shout for help, when the satin lining of a raincoat settles on his soaking wet head and he can detect the faintest trace of a familiar vanilla lotion.

His thoughts settle back into logic as Gladys half-drags him up the beach under the makeshift umbrella of her raincoat.  Thunder roars again in the distance, louder this time.  When they duck into the shelter of the overhang, the sudden absence of pounding, cold raindrops is luxurious.

Jeffrey blinks water from his eyes.  He is hunched over, because the shelter offers no more than about five foot of clearance at its apex.  Gladys has already spread out the blanket from the bag, and sits on it.  She rummages in the bag and then hands him a towel: something Peggy must have thought to include in case Gladys needed it.

Rather than remain hunched, Jeffrey turns awkwardly in the limited space and then sits heavily on the other side of the blanket.  He accepts the towel and dries his head.  He feels foolish, and rather pathetic.

There is a space to one side in this alcove where a rock forms a shallow sloping shelf.  Gladys has draped her raincoat there.  Jeffrey shrugs off his tweed jacket, now beginning to exude that wet-wool smell.  He checks that the inside pocket button is fastened, then he kneels up to place his jacket alongside the raincoat.  Doing this worries at the damage he has done to his right shin.  He hisses at the small pain and then sits back again.

"I slipped on the seaweed," he says, to try to explain why it is he is being quite so useless.

"So I heard," Gladys replies mildly.  "Did you graze yourself?"

"I, er, don't know."  How could he know?  He is not capable of seeing through solid objects.

"You should probably check," she points out.  "If you're bleeding, you won't want it to dry all stuck to your trousers."

He looks at her in alarm.  Is Gladys suggesting that he take his trousers off?

"Roll the leg up," she says, as if he is slow of wit.  "See if you've broken the skin."  She tuts at him, irritated.  "Would you like me to look away?"

Actually he would.  But even more than that, he would like not to appear any more pathetic than he already feels.  So he huffs at the comment and then gingerly rolls up his right trouser leg.  Gladys sits on his left hand side, so he can at least use his left leg as a kind of screen.  Halfway up his shin the material catches something that gives a tiny sting.  He hisses again, and finishes the job, and looks in dismay at the jagged graze that is oozing blood over his pale English leg.

"Ouch," he says glumly.

Gladys peers over his raised left knee without concern for his sense of propriety.  "You've got wool fibres in there.  It needs cleaning."

"Yes, well, unfortunately I didn't think to pack a first-aid box," he snaps.

She arches her brows at him, unruffled by his display of temper.  "Do as you like," she says.  "If it were me, I'd take my shoe off and stick my leg out in the rain, try to wash it a bit.  It'll heal better if it dries clean."

It's always galling when he realises that Gladys has the right of an argument.  All he can do is grumble under his breath as he follows this advice.  He shifts his position in the shelter such that he can push his right leg into the rain while keeping the rest of himself dry.  And he digs out his own clean handkerchief, to prove that he is not entirely helpless.

Once he's washed the cut and patted it dry, he's feeling more self-reliant.  Gladys spoils the moment by handing him a small circular tin of Germolene aseptic ointment.  He supposes that averting any chance of infection is worth the further bruise to his ego, so he accepts the tin and applies some ointment.  Of course, once he has done this he realises he can't roll his trouser leg back down.

Gladys murmurs, "It'll dry out better in the air anyway," as if she can read his mind.

Perhaps she can.  He's been suspecting her of just that, ever since that 'voluptuous French film star' spiel she did.

He sits back against the smooth-worn rock at the rear of the alcove, stretches his legs out on the blanket and looks at the rain.  The sky is dark.  The world is obscured.  There are several tons of cliff above his head.

Thunder claps.

He has one trouser leg rolled up.  Though he has put his shoe and sock back on, he suspects he looked slightly less ridiculous barefoot.  The Germolene is a distasteful pink against his white flesh and tinges the air with its clinical smell.

Gladys says, "Cup of tea?"

Suddenly all he wants to do is laugh at the farce that is his life.

~~~

They've been quiet for several minutes when Jeffrey makes his decision.  He hopes it is the right one.  It might be a mistake; it might be an intrusion.  But they're stuck here for now, and they've shared a thermos of tea, and there is something beguiling about the way the half-light from the cloud-shrouded sun reflects on the rainfall just beyond the rocky arch that forms their window on the rest of the world.

So he decides to make a leap of faith.

"I was at university, the first few years of the war," he says.

He senses her turn to look at him, senses her surprise.  He can't blame her.  He is not given to sharing personal anecdotes.  But he doesn't meet her eyes because he doesn't do well when he knows he is being looked at.

Maybe she is reading his mind again.  A moment later she settles back and returns her attention to the rain.

"I graduated in '42," he says.  "At which point my, er, my student deferment ran out."  Then, because he doesn't want to come across as some kind of privileged, combat-shirking idiot, he adds, "I-I-I was in the ARP up until then."

She hums.  It might be related to his comment; he isn't sure and doesn't analyse too deeply, because he's about to demonstrate how this recount relates to Gladys as well and he's worried how she will react.

"I did my basic training," he says.  "Then I had to do something else.  Officer assessment.  My, er, my father put my name forward."

Gladys goes very still – to the extent that he's certain she has stopped breathing – before she relaxes again.

"No idea why," he goes on.  "I-I had nothing they needed.  No officer-type qualities; not in my early twenties.  But my father insisted, so I did the week's course.  Exams, exercises, interviews.  Hated every minute of it, but there it was.  No one ever wants to let their father down, do they?"

She hums again.  Draws a deep breath.  She still doesn't look at him – so odd, for Gladys – and he's grateful for this.

"End of the week, there was a sort of, er, appraisal thing.  I sat in a wood-panelled office in front of three uniformed military types, all dripping with ribbons and medals.  A-and I got to hear them tell me – very politely, very gently...my god, it was horrific – how they didn't think I was a good fit for command."

He pauses and breathes through that old sense of mortification.

"Well, I squared my shoulders," he goes on, "and I lifted my chin and I said I could have told them that a week ago.  And I was sorry to have wasted their time."  He sniffs.  "Turns out I hadn't, though.  One of the officers there said he wanted me to sit one final test.  They'd, er, noticed something else about me, during that week of proving I was far from officer material.  Turns out I was quite good at processing information and providing reports."

He rests his head against the rock behind him, and smiles sadly to himself.  "I did well in that last test.  I-I was assigned to the Special Operations Executive.  Saw out the rest of the war from Baker Street in London, helping to design operations in the North African theatre."

Jeffrey realises with a jolt that he has been sidetracked by his own achievement.  He wonders why on earth he has decided to try to impress Gladys.  He puts the notion aside and forces himself back on track.

"For the longest time," he says, "I didn't ask my father why he submitted my name for officer assessment.  I suppose we, er, we just didn't have that kind of, well...I mean, emotional, honest talks – that really wasn't us.  But I wondered.  Why he did it.  I'd always thought he understood me quite well, and he was an intelligent man.  It seemed odd that he'd make such a mistake."

He waits a moment before going on.

"And I wondered whether he'd been disappointed in me.  I mean, of course I did."  He frowns into the distance; he hadn't intended to be quite this honest, but it feels right.  "Effectively I failed to make the grade – a-a-a grade he'd clearly wanted for me.  So I wondered whether that had...whether it had damaged us, somehow."

He breathes deeply, seeing his father's eyes looking back at him from memory.

"Anyway.  In 1949 he was diagnosed with cancer of the bowel.  Rather advanced.  He went downhill very quickly.  And all of a sudden there it was," he says.  "The prospect of losing him."

Gladys's breathing stutters, but he pretends not to notice.

"And that was the push I needed.  So I asked him," Jeffrey says.  "One night, after we'd been playing backgammon for matchsticks, I gathered my courage and I did it.  I said to him, out of the blue, 'Officer assessment?  What on earth were you thinking?'"

His lip is trembling.  He reaches up to his mouth and rubs it, as if he can press the tremble back into his flesh where it might hide.  It doesn't work, so he pinches his lips together for long, long moments.  Gladys doesn't shift, or nudge him, or make him feel self-conscious.

"My father...he looked at me and he shook his head.  Gentle.  Indulgent.  You see, he, er, he knew me.  Better than anyone.  He knew that when I sound all brusque and churlish, it's only a façade.  He knew all the tricks I play to try to hide my-my many neuroses."  Jeffrey smiles at the memory.  "And then he told me that it is not a father's job to look at his child and see what is there.  Rather, a father should look and see all that there _could_ be."

He hears Gladys exhale softly: not quite a laugh, but something positive and approving.  He's warmed by the sound.  Encouraged by it.

"And he told me there had not been a single occasion, not in the whole twenty-nine years we'd known each other, when he'd felt let down by me."  He sniffs again.  "Because of course, he knew what I was really asking.  I was asking for his forgiveness.  For failing."

Jeffrey lifts his knees and clasps his hands on them.  His grip is so tight it makes white patches on his skin.  It takes him an unconscionable amount of time – though in reality it is probably only thirty seconds or so – before he can conclude this account.

"Yes.  So, er, that was November, 1949.  He died...I think it was about three days after we had that conversation.  And I'm glad we had it, even if it's steeped in sad memories.  My father's words – they seemed to me like genuine wisdom."  He breathes a self-conscious laugh.  "You know, if I had ever become a father, I-I'd like to think I'd have remembered those words.  Tried to, er, to, er, to live up to them."

There's a long silence, broken only by the thrum of the rain and the occasional clap of thunder.  Jeffrey has nothing more to say.  In fact, he's feeling nervous now.  Why would Gladys care about his own sense of loss?  Might she even wonder if he is berating her?  Telling her to pull herself together, since she is not the only person who ever lost a parent?

God, he hopes she isn't thinking that.

"How did you know?" she asks him, even as his mind is flinching through the various ways his attempt to offer support might have been misunderstood.

"How...?"

"How did you know about my dad?" she presses.

Oh.

Jeffrey shrugs.  "You've been preoccupied all week.  I saw you'd been to church today.  And your, er, your records give your mother as your next of kin."

"I see," she says.  "You've been doing some detective work, have you?"

"I was concerned about you," he tells her, because he isn't happy with the rather underhand connotations to Gladys's suggestion.

"You could have just asked me," she says.

There's a pause.  Jeffrey lets his head fall back and gives a tired laugh.  After a moment, Gladys laughs too.

"Of course, there's that, isn't it?  You're Jeffrey Fairbrother," she says.  "There's no way you could have just asked.  I'm being daft."

"If it helps," he offers, "I am more than aware of my foibles."

Gladys nods.  Then, alarmingly, she jerks her head away and lifts her hand to the bridge of her nose.

"I miss him," she says, all of a sharp exhale.

Jeffrey nods and stares doggedly at his clasped hands on his knees.  Unfortunately, when Gladys's shoulders begin a rhythmic shudder as her grief finally begins to pour out of her, it is impossible to ignore.  He ought to be leaping to his feet and running away, never mind the rain and the seaweed-slippery rocks and the way he currently has one trouser leg up and one trouser leg down.  But it's odd; something about the last half hour in this natural shelter has engendered a kind of closeness.  Enough that he feels able to stretch out his hand and touch her shoulder.  Squeeze.

And for some reason, when this makes her lean away further – as if she is suffering with the same self-consciousness he has known all his life – he's no longer prepared to endure the rejection.

"Oh, Gladys," he says, and tugs her nearer to him.  "For all my failings, I still have a perfectly adequate shoulder."

She turns, hiding her face behind a hand.  She curls up, rests her head against him.  Her arm reaches across his body; her knees tuck under his own.  Before he's quite aware of what is happening, he has his arms full of a weeping Gladys Pugh.

It isn't terrifying at all.  Her pain is real and oh-so-present, but it's clean and it's human and it's readily comforted.

His chest hurts.

The sensation is not unpleasant.

~~~


	3. Bolt from the Blue

**Thursday**  
**(...continued)**

"This is nice," Gladys murmurs, when she has worked through the tears and her breathing is calm again.  The air she exhales is warm through the fabric of his shirt.  "Been a long time since I got a cuddle."

The appearance of this innocuous word should be enough to make Jeffrey shudder with discomfort.  But he's far too busy feeling...well, comfortable, actually.  Even if he's sitting on a blanket, on sand, leaning against bare stone and holding in his arms a woman who has spent four months smouldering in his general direction.

Of course, it makes no sense.  None of it.  But he's coming to understand that logic went out the window quite some time ago.  He's been in more surreal situations than this one through the summer.

He tries to work out the last time someone gave _him_ a cuddle.  It really isn't a word he associates with Daphne.  They shared embraces, of course, especially in the first two or three years of their marriage, but somehow that was different.  For a start, they tended to happen in bed.  In bed, or on a ballroom floor: those were the places Daphne would embrace him.

Embrace.  Cuddle.  Hug.  Clasp.  Did the language make a difference?  Men could embrace, in certain circumstances – fathers and sons, brothers, close friends – but they most assuredly did not cuddle.  Well, not when both individuals were over the age of about three, anyway.  Hugs were generally shorter in duration, he thought.  Were there guidelines about such things?

"What's the difference between a cuddle and an embrace?" he wonders out loud.  Then he panics.  He hadn't meant to say something so absurd.

Gladys doesn't laugh at him.  She hums thoughtfully, then suggests, "Context."

Of course, she is right.

After a moment she adds, "I don't know if it's me or if it happens to all women.  But we get to a point when most men assume that if they're being invited to cuddle, they're also being invited to do other things."

Jeffrey winces.  "I think you've been meeting the wrong kind of men."

"Oh, that's entirely possible."

"Yes, well, I'd like to think there are still those of us who understand that offering comfort and support to a female friend does not require the involvement of-of-of libido."

He frowns at himself, and not because he has just used the word 'libido'.  It's the word 'friend' that has taken him by surprise.

Gladys doesn't seem bothered by his language.  She just sighs against him – warm, moist breath and the scent of vanilla and the soft push of her breast into his side – and says, "Story of my life, you know.  Men come and men go and most of them want to take advantage if they can.  Then along comes Jeffrey Fairbrother.  Takes me in his arms, holds me when I cry, then lectures me on how this has nothing to do with lovemaking."

Jeffrey takes a moment to untangle the conversation.  Gladys seems to have leapt from one side of the argument to the other.  But then again, he's known her for seventeen weeks: long enough to realise that this juxtaposition is very, _very_ Gladys...and with that thought his confusion and irritation is swept aside by a surge of affection.  She is contradictory and confounding, yes, but she's so human and natural and real with it.

Daphne never confounded him; not even on the day she told him they were separating.  Maybe, he ponders, the marriage would have lasted better if they _had_ been able to confound each other.

He inhales deeply and exhales in a sigh.  The sound makes her lift her head and look at him.

"What?" she asks.

He shakes his head.  He can't tell her that he has only just recognised how fond of her he is, because it would seem like a cruelty.  _'Gladys, I've come to care for you.  But don't get your hopes up, because when we say goodbye next month it's still most likely that we'll never see each other again.'_

"Nothing," he says.

She frowns at him.  "I wasn't having a go, you know."

"You weren't, um...?"

"About you not wanting to take advantage.  I was just pointing out the irony."

"Oh.  Yes."

She nods, looking at him: dark eyes still reddened with weeping, a few muddy streaks of cosmetic around them.  He wonders why he finds her beautiful like this.  Then he wonders how he is holding her gaze without any sense of unease.

"Shame, though," she murmurs.

"Hmm?"

"I think you and I would've been wonderful together."

They're beyond a resurgence of Fairbrother-standoffishness now, so he defaults to another of his strongest character traits: honest intellectual curiosity.  "Why do you think that?" he finds himself asking.

She smiles.  "Because I've got to know you this season.  And you're a good man.  A gentle man.  A generous man.  And even when the task you've been set is a tricky one for you, you always do your best.  Job's worth doing, it's worth doing well.  Isn't it?"  The smile widens, and for a moment Jeffrey is treated to a glimpse of her regard for him: a look that is pure and joyful and filled with understanding, where the smoulder of seduction is not smothering everything else.

But only for a moment, before Gladys rests her head again.

His heart is beating a little too fast.  He wonders if she can hear it.  He wonders if she made it happen on purpose.

"It's all right, though," she says.  "Oh, I won't apologise for how I feel.  I'm done with being awkward about that.  But I'm not a halfwit.  I know you can't force someone to love you.  It's no one's fault.  Just the way it is."

Perhaps it is this storm-swept beach and the private interlude they have found themselves sharing here.  Or perhaps it is Jeffrey's peripheral awareness that he can say or do anything, and in three weeks' time he can put it behind himself and not worry about it again.  Or perhaps he's been building up to this moment for weeks on end; or perhaps it's just the raw emotion of this encounter, the fact that Gladys trusted him with her grief and her tears, the way the softness of her curves is threatening to force a reassessment of everything he thinks he knows about himself.

Whatever it is, he says, "It may not be the kind of love you want from me, Gladys, but...I do love you."

She goes very still.  There's a tremulous kind of interval, separating out what came before and what comes next.  He doesn't know why this seems such a milestone; he expressed almost exactly the same sentiment in the Hawaiian Ballroom a few weeks ago, during the Bahamas competition.

Then Gladys relaxes against him and says, "I don't know if that makes me feel better."

He knows what to say to that.  "And I won't apologise for the way I feel."

Jeffrey senses rather than sees the way she smiles as he offers her own words back to her.  "But will you feel awkward about it?" she challenges him.

"You know me," he says.  "I, er, tend to feel awkward about most things."

She laughs, but doesn't add anything more.  And that, it seems, is the conversation concluded.  It was probably about time.  The last time he'd tried to be honest with her, he'd been three sheets to the wind.  And in the years to come, perhaps it will be good for the both of them to be able to look back on the summer of 1959 and remember a connection that was forged in mutual support and respect and honest-to-goodness affection.

It seems that they are still cuddling.  Jeffrey doesn't care.  The rain is less heavy now.  The patch of sky visible beyond the horizon is clearing of clouds, and the sunlight has increased.  The storm is moving west and they are on its trailing edge.  This interlude will be over soon.

"What was your dad's name?" Gladys asks, after a short but companionable silence.

"David.  David Francis Fairbrother."

"What did he do?"

"He was a solicitor.  Mainly conveyancing."

"Was he young?  When he passed?"

"Not really.  He, er, came to marriage and fatherhood later in life.  He was seventy-five when he died."

"Was it hard for your mother?"

Jeffrey smiles wryly and rests his cheek on the top of Gladys's head.  "Mother is quintessentially no-nonsense.  The notion of sharing her emotions with anyone, e-even her only son, would appall her."  He sighs.  "It was difficult.  But she did her best to hide it."

Gladys nods against him.  Her hair is soft and fine against his skin.

"Grief makes us isolate ourselves," she says.  "I don't know why.  But I think a part of it is that it hurts so bad, we don't _want_ anything to make us feel better."

"Should I not have followed you out here?"

"Oh, I think I can find it in my heart to forgive you."

He smiles at that.  "You looked ready to horsewhip me, earlier."

"Well..."

"I know.  I-I was intruding.  In my defence, I realised it immediately."

She shakes her head.  "Wasn't just that.  I thought you'd come here to say something else."

"Oh?"  He waits, but she doesn't clarify.  "What was that, then?"

"Oh, Jeffrey," she sighs.  "I don't even want to say it out loud."

He is at a loss.  After everything they have said to each other today, there seems no further reason to be cagey.  "Am I supposed to guess, then?"

"Never mind."

The silence that follows is awkward.  As if realising this, Gladys pulls away from his arms and sits back up.  She spends a moment fussing with a small compact taken from her bag, examining the damage her tears have done to her cosmetic.  She uses a handkerchief to dab away a couple of smudges.

With a brisk snap, the compact is returned to the bag.  Gladys inhales deeply and then settles back against the rock.

"I've been telling myself something," she says, eyes narrowed as she contemplates the rain.  "For a few weeks now.  Since the business with your wife."

"Ex-wife," he supplies, almost automatically.  "The, er, divorce is partially complete."

"That was fast," Gladys says.

"Considering Daphne left me fourteen months ago, perhaps not _that_ fast."

"Well, even so."  Her shoulders lift and lower with a deep breath, like she is preparing herself for some kind of exertion.  "I've been telling myself that if we can only get to the end of the season, without–"

She stops suddenly.  Looks away from him

Less than an hour ago, Jeffrey Fairbrother would have reacted in alarm.  He'd have made up an excuse for leaving her to her thoughts.  Or he'd have changed the subject.  At best he might have sat there awkwardly, twisting at his own thumbs, dreading the next words to be spoken.

Four months at Crimpton-on-Sea have changed Jeffrey.  But forty-five minutes in a small shelter at the base of a cliff seem to have changed him even more.  He takes her hand from her lap and presses it between his own.

They are friends, are they not?  "Tell me," he encourages.

She turns back, but she's looking at their clasped hands rather than his face.  The sight seems to make her frown.

"You can be confusing, Jeffrey," she accuses him.  "And prickly, and evasive, and there is a part of you that is quite the self-satisfied noble idiot."

His masculine ego wants to complain.  His intellect points out that it's one of the more accurate assessments of his character he's ever heard.

"But when it comes down to it," Gladys goes on, "there's something I can always rely on.  Something I believe in.  And that's your decency.  I've seen it time and again, this season.  So many different ways.  But it's always there – how you try, you always try, to do the right thing."

"I try," he agrees.  "I don't always succeed."

"It's the trying that matters.  So I told myself – if you haven't said anything to me by the end of the season then it'll be all right.  Because you're too much a decent soul to walk away without even saying goodbye."

Jeffrey goes cold.  He'd like to blame it on the fresher wind that has blown in with the storm, but he can't.  The few seconds that follow feel like an ice age.  Everything is frozen, locked in place.

Gladys breaks the moment by looking up at his face.  There is a new tremor in her fingers: those slender female fingers he is still clasping between his hands as if the two of them are close, are friends, are connected.

"Ohh," she says, though it is little more than a breath.  Her fingers pull away.

He swallows hard and says, "Gladys," but he doesn't know the words that should come after that one.

"I was wrong, wasn't I?" she whispers.  How can a whisper be so loud and piercing?  "Walking away, not saying goodbye – that's _exactly_ what you were going to do."

"I don't know," he says, and tries to find some kernel of honesty to the statement.  "I've no plans.  Nothing set in stone.  How can I–"

"Will you be here next season?" she demands.

He wants to say maybe.  Maybe he'll be back, if nothing else comes up.  But something will come up, even if it involves going cap-in-hand to Hugo Buxton.

He's not coming back.  Crimpton has already served its purpose, and the last thing he wants is to lengthen his tenure as an employee subject to Joe Maplin's despicable values.

"I'm sorry," he says, because really it's the only thing he can say.

Gladys leaps to her feet, somehow without cracking her head on the roof of their shelter, and she has marched off into the rain before he can process what just happened.  Damn it, he came all this way to try to _stop_ her from catching her death–

No he didn't.  He came all this way because it was time for some honesty.  And he's only just worked that out.

He gets up slowly, not wanting to sustain an injury himself.  Then, with one trouser leg still rolled up just past his knee, he stumbles out after her.

"Gladys, please!" he calls.

She's already skirting the rock pools, making much shorter work of the beach than he had.  "Leave me alone!" she yells back, all fire and anger and earthy Celtic passion.

Absurdly, he is envious of her uninhibited emotion.  It must be liberating, just allowing yourself to feel.  Jeffrey thinks that, in this regard, he hasn't known a moment of liberation in his entire life.

Then he remembers the seaweed-slick rocks, and the fact that it is still raining, and the way that you don't take sensible precautions in looking where you tread when you are upset.  His focus is back on the here and now, and he tries to quicken his steps.  The storm has dampened the soft dry sand above the high tide line into something firmer and more navigable.  He runs; his knees protest but he runs still.  He reaches the rock pools and tries to swerve around them and his right ankle clips a rock and judders at the graze he has already sustained this afternoon.

And then he sees her.  She hasn't attempted the path.  Perhaps she has remembered that her coat and her shoulder bag are still in the shelter.  Or perhaps she's just got far too much in the way of common sense to go scrambling up wet seaweedy rocks in her light sandals.

Either way, he stops running and walks the rest of the way.  He tries not to wince at the flares of pain in his knees.

She rounds on him.  She is furious, and she is heartbroken.  "How could you?" she demands.  She is weeping again.  Her tears are, as it turns out, much more terrifying when he is their cause.

"Do I have to point out the obvious?" he asks, trying to sound reasonable but aware that he sounds petulant instead.  "I don't belong here, Gladys.  I tried.  I failed.  I don't have Ted's charisma, I don't have your warmth and your charm, I-I-I don't have _any_ of the skills needed for this place.  It's time for me to move on."

"I don't mean that.  How could you not _tell_ me?"

Damn it, that's a harder question to answer.  But she deserves that he make the attempt.

"Because telling you would have meant an emotional conversation."  He waves his arms between them.  "Rather like this one.  And I'm terribly, terribly bad at them."

She looks at him a moment.  The rain, though lighter than it has been, is plastering the dark hair to the sides of her face.  That hair was so fine and soft against his cheek just a few short minutes ago.

"No you're not," she says.  Eyes narrowed, considering.  Seeing right through every veneer he has ever tried to protect himself with – _god_ , this woman can unnerve him.  "You're not bad at them at all.  You may not like them, but you're clever enough, and you're thoughtful and you're honest.  You can manage them just fine, if you bother to make the effort."  She forces air through her nostrils, disdainful, dismissive.  "You're not bad at them, Jeffrey Fairbrother.  You're _afraid_ of them."

He lets the accusation fold itself around him, then he huffs an angry sigh.  This is not the first time she has dissected his shortcomings with brutal efficiency.  It's not even the first time she's done so on a beach.  She was right, back in July, when she told him he didn't know about anything other than dead things.

And she's right now, of course.

"Well?" she prompts, looking for the back-and-forth, the counterargument, offering him the chance to prove her wrong.  Because she's annoyingly astute and she can be harsh in her criticism, but he has never known her to be unfair.  Even when he lets her down, she is supportive and she's loyal and – dear god! – it's almost overwhelming to recognise the _trust_ he has invested in her.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," he says plaintively.

"Do what?"  She is almost growling.  "Say things about you that you don't like?  What, you want me to be adoring and blind to all your pompous idiocy, twenty-four hours a day, do you?"

"No, that's not what I want," he says back, and is surprised to note that they are all but shouting at each other.

"Well what do you want then?"

What he wants...

Her eyes widen with surprise when he rushes across the small distance that separates them.  Before his tangled-up thoughts can raise any kind of alarm, he reaches for her shoulders and pulls her close to him and presses his mouth to hers.

Relief, for a moment, because he's finally kissing her and he has only just recognised how badly he wanted to do that.

Then concern, because he wants to deepen the kiss but she's almost frozen against him, and it occurs to Jeffrey that kissing the woman you just claimed was not even worthy of a proper goodbye might not be the done thing.  Then he's wondering whether the press of his mouth is too hard.  He hasn't kissed a woman properly in almost two years, and he's never been convinced by his skills in this specific area.

Somewhere in his lower gut he begins to panic, panic, panic–

Gladys pulls back, just an inch, and breathes, "God, not like this," and he thinks, yes, you're right, I'm taking advantage and I didn't want to be that kind of–

But she doesn't mean no kissing.  She means a different kind of kissing.

Very, very gently she brushes her parted lips over his, once and then twice and then the third time is the charm because he hears himself groan as he meets her, like for like.  Their mouths find a compatible pressure as they fit together, carefully exploring the intimacy of touching like this, and then the tip of her tongue shyly seeks his own and he can only groan again.  This kiss is slow and sensual and trembles with a kind of deep-down longing: something he has refused to acknowledge for months on end.  His hands move from her shoulders, one seeking the small of her back to pull her closer, the other sliding up and into her rain-damped hair.  His fingers caress, and she arches into him and kisses deeply and makes a tiny noise in the back of her throat that seems to flow through his body straight to his loins, which are, as it turns out, very, _very_ awake–

This shocking awareness of the prurience in his physical response is enough to make him pull away.  He breathes hard.

"Gladys," he whispers.  He wants to go back to the kissing.  He wants to lay her down, right here on this rain-swept beach.  He wants to run away.  He wants to break down and weep.  "Gladys," he says again.  It's all he has.

"I thought you didn't love me like that," she points out, lips swollen and cheeks flushed and eyes half-closed and dark with her passion.  Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

"I'm a fool," he mumbles.  "I'm a coward."  He breathes deep, sighs it out, tries to step back from this bubble of sensuality that wrapped the two of them up without warning.  "And I'm a selfish blaggard.  Gladys, I have _nothing_ to offer you."

"You have a delicious mouth," she counters.

So does she.  "That's not what I mean.  I-I-I..."  Damn it, he hates it when the stuttering intensifies.  "I have no intention of marrying again."

Gladys's eyebrows arch.  "Marriage?  Gracious me, Jeffrey – usually when men want to move things along much too fast they're trying to get me into bed."

"Yes, well, mock me if you will, but–"  He stops abruptly.  Water is running down his back again.  "Gladys, can we get out of the rain?"

"Oh, I don't know," she teases, a glimmer in her eyes.  "It was working for me."  But she smiles and takes his hand and leads him around the rock pools for a second time, until they are back in their shelter.

Gladys peels off her cardigan and sets it out to dry.  Jeffrey, alas, did not wear anything over or under his shirt today besides his already soaked jacket.  He's stuck in damp cotton.  Gladys retrieves the towel from the bag and pats her face dry, then offers the towel to him.  He wants to tuck it around his neck, but her hair is as wet as his own and she hasn't given hers the brisk rub he has just managed, so he hands it back.  Gladys wraps the towel around her neck.  There is a shiver of gooseflesh over her arms, and it isn't because of that moment of passion out on the beach.  He tries to smooth his hair back down with his hands.  His shirt is clinging and uncomfortable.

When they've settled down, there's an awkward pause.  Everything has changed and yet everything is still the same, and Jeffrey has no idea what to do about it.  Gladys seems as hesitant as he is, now.

In the end, he supposes that there is no reason not to be forthright.  "I can't do the, er, the, er, casual approach.  To romance.  Can't do it," he says.  "It just isn't in me."

"All or nothing," Gladys suggests.

"Indeed."

"And since there's no chance of all, it has to be nothing."

"I think it would be unfair to imply anything else."

She nods at that.  "If that's your attitude, fair enough.  But I'm not sure how it works.  In the real world, I mean."

Jeffrey frowns.  "I don't follow."

"Well – relationships grow.  They don't just appear, fully formed, all ready to either have or not to have.  They start out with little sparks and little connections.  And you have to work at them.  Guide them.  Explore them.  Sometimes they fizzle out because there isn't enough to keep them going.  Sometimes they take you by surprise.  But you'll never know whether something is worthy of 'all' rather than 'nothing' unless you go along with it for a while.  Try it out, and see."

He doesn't like this façade of sense and practicality that Gladys is exuding.  It is threatening to undermine his worldview.

"Except we know, don't we?" he says.  "I mean, I realise I got rather swept up in the moment, a-and I apologise for that.  It wasn't fair on either of us, but especially not on you.  The point is – we already know there isn't enough here, don't we?  I can't stay at Crimpton just because you like me being here and I like you – that would be absurd.  But take the camp out of the equation, Gladys, and what do we even share?"

She turns to look at him; the first time she's really looked since they sat back down.  She captures her lower lip in her teeth and tugs.  Her brow creases.  "You know almost nothing about me," she says, "and yet you've already assumed there's nothing we could share?  Nothing we could agree on, nothing we could do or be together?"

"Gladys–"

"No.  I mean, I don't blame you.  You're no better than I am at sharing personal information, are you?  I usually have to drag it out of you.  But at least I _ask_."  She tilts her head to one side.  "When was the last time you asked me something about myself?"

He opens his mouth.  Then he closes it.  Then an idea occurs and he says, "Your father..."  He tails off, because he realises she is right.

"You knew about my dad because you dug around and worked it out.  You could have come to me and said, 'What's wrong, Gladys?'  And I'd've told you.  But you didn't do that."

"I know you come from Pontypridd," he says, flailing now for evidence of the way he ought to understand her.  "And-and the colliery.  Eating fish and chips.  Oh, and, er, sunsets."

"Well, I suppose you get full marks for remembering something I said once, even if it wasn't the result of you expressing any interest."

He gives up trying to be nice, because he's annoyed now.  "I know you left school at fourteen."

"You know that from my file," she counters.

"I know your taste in music and literature does not match my own."

"No you don't."

He splutters.  "Gladys, you offered to lend me your _Black and White Minstrels_ record!"

"It's the only one I have here.  The television show is very popular, you know.  People were requesting some of the tunes for Radio Maplin."

"Even so, I'm not convinced we have any overlap when it comes to–"

"What's your favourite novel?" she demands.

Jeffrey hesitates, then he shrugs.  "I've yet to discover a novel that impresses me more than _Crime and Punishment_."

Gladys arches a brow.  "And who's that by, then?"

"Fyodor Dostoyevsky."

"Sounds foreign."

He tries not to sigh, though she is proving his point with each of her comments.  "He was Russian."

"Oh.  So did you read this book in the original Russian, then?"

He coughs and says, "Of course I didn't.  I read the translation."

She nods.  "So how many languages do you actually speak?  Fluently, I mean.  Well enough to read a novel in that language."

He shifts.  "I have decent French–"

"Fluent?"

"Well, no...my Latin is rather good."

"Lot of call for fluent Latin, is there?"

"Gladys–"

"I speak two languages, fluently," she says.  "My favourite novel – not that you'd ever have thought of asking – is _North and South_ by Elizabeth Gaskell.  I've read it five times now.  I always find something new in it to make me think.  Or did you think I'm incapable of thought?"

"Look–"

"Because that's what this is about, isn't it, Jeffrey?  You use words like 'nothing to share' and 'nothing in common' but what you mean is that I'm too working class and too stupid to be any kind of a prospect for a fine, upstanding, educated man like yourself!"

"I have never, and I _would_ never call you 'stupid'!"

She glares.  "No.  You'd say 'badly educated' or some such, and think that makes it all right."

"I can hardly be held responsible for the lamentable divisions in our society, Gladys," he retorts.  Pompously.  "I was given, because of an accident of birth, more opportunities than you were, e-e-education-wise.  I'm sorry you didn't get the same.  But acknowledging this does not make me..."

"A snob?"

He opens his mouth to reply angrily, because he refuses to accept this accusation of snobbery.  Such things are the purview of his mother.  Didn't he come to Crimpton because he wanted to embrace a part of society that High Table at Cambridge did nothing but sneer at?  Since the war, the old class boundaries have been crumbling and Jeffrey believes this is a good thing.

He is not a snob.  He is not!  People should not be judged on their background, their wealth, their education.

So why is he so quick to do exactly that when it comes to Gladys Pugh?

He growls out his frustration, sits back and looks at the rain.  Gladys seems to sense he needs to think, so she settles again beside him.  Amazingly, her anger recedes, and quite quickly.  She waits, not pressing her advantage, not discomfiting him with sulks or huffs or even quiet seething.

He seems to remember that her record for seething at him is about a minute and a half before she felt compelled to present her grievance.  That was on the same day she found a home for his dog and prevented him from losing his job.  Classic Gladys Pugh: problem-solving, making things better.

A minute and a half.  Ninety paltry seconds.  He wants to laugh.

Daphne...now Daphne could seethe at him, consistently, for weeks on end.  She'd be all cold shoulders and then feigned confusion when he tried to prise open her tightly held complaint, and in the meantime life would go on, albeit constantly weighed down by some mystical problem that had no opportunity for resolution.

Jeffrey is forced to acknowledge that, as much as emotional confrontation unnerves him, Gladys's way is much better.  Even when she's angry, there's a kernel of fairness and generosity there.  Even when, perhaps, he does not deserve it.

And damn it, _North and South_ is a superb novel.  Probably his favourite Gaskell.  Perhaps it is not mere coincidence that the story involves themes of crossing class boundaries.  Or, now he comes to think of it, a passionate love story between two  people who appear to be polar opposites and who spend a lot of the novel misunderstanding each other.

But Gladys left school at fourteen.  How on earth did she discover classic Victorian literature?  How, for that matter, did she know that 'scrupulosity' is a proper English word when he did not?

She keeps tripping him up.  And every time she does, she seems to stop, lean down, offer a hand and haul him back to his feet.  He has never been so generous or forgiving in his dealings with her.

For the first time, it occurs to Jeffrey that he is entirely unworthy of Gladys Pugh.

When he starts to talk, he isn't quite sure what he wants to say.  He's almost trying to work things out for himself.

"I thought my marriage was a happy one," he says quietly.  Gladys doesn't shuffle or complain at the apparent change in topic.  "It might have been, perhaps.  For two or three years.  I was happy.  I thought Daphne was as well."

Gladys gives a hum of encouragement, but nothing more.

"Maybe by the fourth year or so," he goes on, "I, er, noticed things were...'stale' is the wrong word.  It wasn't a negative thing.  I'm sure it's quite usual, actually, for the early excitement to fade away.  Things got comfortable.  Maybe a little bit dull, now and then."  He breathes deeply.  "It has been pointed out to me on numerous occasions that I am a dull man."

"Oh, tedious beyond words," Gladys murmurs.

He glances her way.  She stares at the rain.  There's a twinkle in her eyes.  Even now, after anger and accusation, she is teasing him.  Her mood can turn on a sixpence, whereas his mood swings with all the grace of a double-decker bus.

"The point is," he says, looking away again, "that I have learned, through experience, how marriage needs more than that early _frisson_."  He risks a tease of his own.  "Which, by the way, is French."

Gladys snorts a laugh and nudges his shoulder with hers.  He smiles, and doesn't feel any sort of tension when her shoulder settles against him and they are leaning towards each other.

"I've already demonstrated that I am not good husband material," he said.  "My marriage failed.  I am at the very least partly to blame for that.  And in failing, it was hurtful.  A very painful experience.  I don't think I'm ready to subject myself to that again."

"Fair enough," Gladys says.  "I mean, it's been a couple of weeks, hasn't it?  You should be over it by now."

Her irony is honed to razor-sharpness.  "Point taken."  He shakes his head.  "Look, even if something came along that made me rethink the whole marriage idea, what I'm trying to say is this: marriage needs something to-to-to keep it going after the excitement fades away.  I don't think that is unreasonable."

"It isn't," Gladys agrees.  A pause.  "So, your ex-wife.  Nothing to share, was there?  No common ground, once the passion faded?"

He tries to form a reply, to bring his perfectly sensible argument to its conclusion.  The problem is that Gladys has just pointed out the flaw in his thinking.

"Nothing to share," he agrees bleakly.

"That's a shame."

And because he is an honest man, even when he can be prickly and evasive and a self-satisfied noble idiot and even a bit of a snob, he adds, quite bewildered, "And yet we had so much in common."

"Ah."  She doesn't sound surprised.

His chest has gone back to hurting.  There's a ringing in his ears.  He doesn't understand.  He doesn't know what to think.  He doesn't know what he wants any more.

It seems only reasonable to express this to her.  "Gladys, I don't think I have ever been quite so confused as I find myself in this very moment."

Her shoulder leans against his more heavily.  "That's all right," she reassures.  "Talk or don't talk.  Think or take a break from thinking.  I'm not going anywhere."

He nods.  He is exhausted, mentally and physically.  "I haven't been sleeping well this week," he admits.

"Hmm.  Me neither."

With a suddenness that is frightening, his whole life feels like it is crashing down on him.  "Oh Gladys," he whispers.  "I'm so tired of not knowing who I am or where I'm going."

He suspects this might be the most honest thing he has said in his whole life.

She drops her head to his shoulder.  "Me too," she confesses.

It is this small but essential example of common ground, tired and ill-defined though it is, that seems to effect a shifting of his priorities.  Because through the murk of so many confused thoughts, something gains clarity: a single point of bright light.

Whatever happens from here on in, he needs and he wants Gladys Pugh in his life.  Colleague, friend, partner, lover, wife: all this is detail.  Just so long as she is there.

The clamouring quietens.  The rain beyond the shelter has become no more than a light shower.

He thinks he should somehow try to start afresh, and to do it right this time.

"Gladys?" he murmurs.

"Mmm?"

He turns his face into the top of her head, drops a kiss there and then rests his cheek.

"What was your father's name?" he asks.

~~~


	4. Refracted Sunlight

**Friday**

It is twenty-five past six in the morning.  Jeffrey is wearing bathing trunks.

As he walks to the pool, modesty intact thanks to his dressing gown, he is wondering whether Gladys will even be there.  At this point he'd be glad of the excuse to write this off as a ridiculous idea and return to the safety of his chalet.

He sees her before she sees him.  She is sitting on one of the loungers, the only living thing in sight because...well, because it is twenty-five past six in the morning.  She is tucking a few stray dark hairs beneath her swimming cap.  An ankle-length robe of palest pink covers her bathing suit.

Jeffrey had been hoping for the chance to get into the water and swim a few lengths – basically to remind himself that he can still swim – before she arrived.  So much for that.

He wanders over to her.  She looks up, surprised.  "May I join you this morning?" he asks, trying to sound nonchalant.  He doesn't pull it off.  (He rarely pulls off such things.)

"I didn't know you swam," Gladys says.  Her eyes – cosmetic-free and more beautiful for it – offer welcome, though.

"Semi-competently," he says, because if he claims any more and then fails to offer proof he will look like an idiot.

She studies him for long moments.  Then she smiles slowly.  "So who's going to disrobe first, then?"

He almost panics; it's like muscle-memory, an automated response.  He looks up to the morning sky and controls his breathing.  The temperature today is a good five degrees lower than yesterday morning, but the sun is pleasant and the air feels clear.  There's nothing to be unsure of, here.  He remembers the trust: the foundation of all good things.

His efforts to control his sense of vulnerability are interrupted by the sound of a splash.  He looks back to see Gladys already in the pool, her robe all of a discarded heap on the lounger.  She comes up from under the water, blinks it from her eyes, smirks at him.

"Missed out there, didn't you?" she teases.

He says, "Um."  He is trying to start afresh, but in most regards he is a slow man to change.

She just grins.  "See you at the other end!"  Then she turns, launches herself from the side and stretches into a length of breaststroke.

Alone on the poolside, Jeffrey mutters, "You run rings around me, madam."  Still, he takes a moment to check no one else might be looking before he shrugs off his own dressing gown – his older one, made of flannel, because what use is raw silk when you're soaking wet? – and sits himself gingerly on the ledge of the pool.

The water feels shockingly cold to his feet.  He doesn't remember the water being so cold the last time he was in here.  Perhaps the difference is the time of day.

Jeffrey slides into the pool.  He submerges himself, then comes up for air and pushes his hair back across his head.  "Bloody hell," he gasps.

If he doesn't swim, he might well freeze to death.  So he swims.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother may not be an athlete, but he is a competent swimmer.  He is apparently blessed with good shoulders and with excellent calves, both of which are important.

So he is advised, in any case.

~~~

**Saturday**

Changeover day is always a bit strange: mornings are busy with departures, late afternoons with arrivals.  But for the entertainment staff, the hours between ten in the morning and two thirty in the afternoon are a welcome respite from the hordes.

Jeffrey uses the time today – as he often does on a Saturday – to walk from the railway station into the town centre and spend an hour or so browsing the shops.  It isn't exactly a bustling metropolis, but there is a decent second-hand bookshop, an antique shop and a genuinely good local bakery.

In the bookshop he finds last year's Bantam Classics edition of _Crime and Punishment_.  He panics the moment he has bought it, wondering if a gift like this might be a touch Henry Higgins.  He tells himself he is not seeking to transform Gladys into something she is not.  He is not trying to educate, but rather to enrich.  (Though perhaps that is an issue of semantics; Jeffrey believes the two things are intertwined.)

Maybe he will work out whether or not he should give Gladys a copy of his favourite novel in the time it takes him to get the bus back to the coast.  He comforts himself with a large paper bag of Eccles cakes.  They are from the last batch of the morning and still warm when he takes them from Mr. Bowsham.  He eats two in the bus on the ride back, and then decides he had better make the early-morning swim a regular occurrence if he's going to carry on this way.

At the camp, he avoids the staff chalets.  With the late summer sunshine, the younger Yellowcoats will all be on the patch of lawn outside, skin on show, squabbling and flirting in equal measure.  They make him feel tired and old when they're like that.  He heads instead to the office, puts his purchases down at his desk, and wonders what he should do with himself for the next two hours.

The telephone rings.  It's a distraction, at least, though it's an odd time for phone calls to come through to the office.  He answers with just his name.  (He never found a better and more informative response that didn't cause him to fall over his own words.)

At the other end of the line, a confident male voice asks for Betty Whistler.

"I'm afraid Betty isn't in the office and she doesn't have her own telephone line," Jeffrey says patiently.  "The, er, best I can do is pass on a message and ask her to call you back."

The confident voice, as it transpires, belongs to a theatrical personage.  It seems that Betty used her day off last week to travel to London for an audition at the Old Vic, and she has been successful.  Jeffrey recalls that she went to drama school.

He notes the contact details down and then goes off to the chalets to find Betty.  True to habit, the troops are sunning themselves on the lawn.  Gary is topless – something which is unfortunate given his expanding paunch – and appears to be asleep in a deckchair.  The twins are playing cards.  Betty is stretched out on a towel and has her nose in a book.  Sylvia is beside her, her bikini top unclipped to allow – Jeffrey can only assume – for an evenness of tan.  Tracey, now much better after several unhappy days of a stomach upset, has the sense to keep her head covered with a wide-brimmed hat.  She sits close to the twins and is apparently cheering one of them on.

And Gladys is there too, standing with her back to him as he approaches.  She wears her Yellowcoat uniform and is holding a cumbersome bundle of something in her arms.

As he draws near, he hears Sylvia drawl, "This is downtime.  _Our_ time.  Sorry, Gladys, but you can't order us about every single minute of every day."

Gladys sounds annoyed.  "For goodness sake, it's a ten minute job!  I can manage by myself, but it's quicker and easier with two."

"Can't it wait till next season?" Sylvia asks.  "The tennis nets have been in terrible condition for over a month.  What's two more weeks?"

Ah.  The bundle Gladys holds is the new set of nets for the tennis courts.  Jeffrey remembers the requisition.

"How do you think I managed to wangle this kind of new gear so late in the season?" Gladys counters.  "The photographer's due on Wednesday to take pictures for next season's brochure."

"Fine."  Sylvia sighs her put-upon sigh.  "So we'll get it done by Wednesday then."

"We do it now.  It'll make a better first impression for the arrivals this afternoon."

Jeffrey looks on.  Both Betty and Tracey are doing their best not to be involved; he suspects either or both would be offering to help were it not for Sylvia taking this stand.  Perhaps this is true of the twins, too.  Sylvia is very beautiful, very confident and rather lazy, but most of all she likes to be the alpha in the little pack of Yellowcoats, and she resents the hell out of Gladys.

Normally he would not intervene.  He'd tell himself that to do so would undermine Gladys's authority, though that would be a half-truth; really he would step back because what kind of idiot puts himself in the firing line between two headstrong women?

Not this time.  This time he remembers how Henry Pritchard failed to support Gladys when her father died.  He remembers all the myriad failures in support he is guilty of this season.  He compares it to the number of times Gladys has gone above-and-beyond for him.

It's about time he redresses the imbalance.  "Something I can help with, Gladys?" he asks.

Gladys turns to look at him, startled.  Her face flushes up, embarrassed to have been caught like this.

Before she can reply, Sylvia says, "Jeff!  Wonderful timing.  I need lotion on my back."  She gathers her bikini top to her half-exposed breasts as she pushes up, then she tosses a plastic bottle to him with a challenging look aimed mainly, Jeffrey suspects, at Gladys.

He refrains from trying to catch the bottle – mainly because trying and then failing is always humiliating – and instead lets it hit his arm and then tumble back to the lawn near his feet.  He feels indignant for Gladys, yes, but also for the other Yellowcoats under Sylvia's thumb, _and_ for himself.  He is not the kind of man to fall over his own feet when offered the chance of hand-to-skin contact with Sylvia Garnsey's shoulder blades, and it offends him that others might believe it to be the case.

So he say, "Yes, well, I'm on, er, 'downtime' at the moment too, Sylvia.  Sorry."

Betty snorts, deflecting Sylvia's glare away from him.

The twins seem to sense the growing hostilities.  Their playing cards are set aside and either Bruce or Stanley stands up.  (Since last week's ankle sprain has healed sufficiently for Bruce to no longer need crutches, or even to limp much, Jeffrey has gone back to being unable to tell them apart.)  The twin holds out his hand to Gladys.  "Hand them over, then," he says.  "Me and Bruce will sort them out.  All four courts, is it?"

Gladys hands over the nets.  "Thank you," she says to (apparently) Stanley.

Sylvia mutters, "Traitors."

Tracey springs up.  "I'll help," she decides.  "We can give them a test run.  Mixed doubles?"

Betty closes her book: Pasternak's _Doctor Zhivago_ , Jeffrey sees on the cover.  "I'm in."

Appalled, Sylvia says, "Betty!"

"Actually," Jeffrey puts in, "I need Betty in the office."

Sylvia's glare is back.  It takes a moment to realise how his words have been misunderstood, which of course makes him glance at Gladys.  Who is not glaring, but who looks confused and a bit distressed.

"Um," he says.  "I-I-I need Gladys, too."

"The man's insatiable," Bruce, or possibly Stanley – Jeff has lost track again – says as they head off down the path, Tracey in tow.

"Good taste, though," the other twin points out.

"You cannot fault the man's taste," the first one agrees.

Jeffrey pretends not to hear.

Betty is frowning as she gets up.  "Did I do something wrong?"

"I'll say," Sylvia mutters.

"O-of course not," Jeffrey says.  "Ladies?"

"Hey!" Sylvia calls as he leads Betty and Gladys in the direction of the office.  "Who's going to do my back?"

~~~

As soon as Betty learns of her success, she has her head in the clouds.  It is only thanks to Gladys that Betty manages to ask her new employer the important questions about digs and wages and hours.  Gladys even helps to dictate Betty's resignation letter.

While all this takes place, Jeffrey moves out of the office into the staff area and sits down on the little two-person sofa there.  Message delivered, he has lost any real usefulness.  It strikes him as just a touch chastening to recognise that, in this, his role is that of secretary, whereas Gladys is the one managing the situation.

When they're done, Betty comes out into the staff area and insists on hugging the both of them.  "I'm so sorry to let you down, leaving early like this," she tells Gladys, a little misty-eyed.  "But sometimes...sometimes you've just _got_ to follow your dream!"  She sweeps out then, to join the twins and Tracey for a game of tennis before the buses are ready to take them back to the railway station.

Jeffrey shares an amused look with Gladys as soon as they are left alone.

Gladys says, "Oh, heavens, was I ever that young?"

Feeling impish, Jeffrey replies, "Twenty-one?  Well, let's see, it was about five years ago, wasn't it?"

She looks sharply at him, then her eyes widen in surprise.  "Jeffrey Fairbrother, you have a wicked sense of humour – once you get past all those stuffy inhibitions."

"Don't tell anyone," he says.

"Promise."  She sits down on the sofa he was occupying until Betty's dramatic leave-taking required him to stand up.  She gives a sigh, leans forward and rubs at the back of her head.

He frowns in concern.  "Headache?"

"Little one.  It'll be fine."

"Tea?" he offers.

"That would be very welcome," she agrees.

She's probably expecting him to request a tray from the canteen, but there is a kitchen just off the passage outside the staff area.  Along one wall is the familiar coffee trolley with its rather intimidating stainless steel urn.  He ignores it and puts the kettle on.  While he waits for it to boil, he recalls the sound of Gladys dictating Betty's letter of resignation – _"...call it 'unforeseen circumstances' since Joe Maplin's less likely to throw a strop about breach of contract if he thinks you've been bereaved...no, three 'e's in 'unforeseen', don't they teach you anything at these posh finishing schools?..."_ – and then he tries to compose his own letter of resignation in his head.

Leaving is the right decision, of course, but he still has no idea what he might end up doing once he leaves the camp in two weeks' time.  Like so many things, it's about money.

Jeffrey's background is solidly middle class, but he's never been cash-rich.  His father's death left him with a modest inheritance; Jeffrey divided this between his private pension plan and the purchase of his house in Cambridge.  But his academic's salary was never all that impressive.  No one chooses academia because of the get-rich-quick potential.

That said, he was in quite a good financial position at the beginning of the season.  The house was bought and paid for, even if the only person benefiting from that was Daphne.  And of course, the job at Crimpton provided full room and board, so while his Maplins salary was by no means a step-up from academia, he hadn't needed to spend very much of it.

And then he'd got divorced.

Two solicitor's bills have been paid in the last three weeks.  Those have made something of a dent in Jeffrey's savings.  There'll be another big bill before Christmas.  And his one decent asset – the townhouse which, on the current market, is worth fifteen hundred pounds more than the three and a half thousand he paid for it – is not his asset any more.  It is Daphne's.

It made sense, signing it over to her.  She agreed to accept the property in lieu of maintenance payments and any claim on his pension.  And whenever he finds himself bristling over the way he spent six years of his life paying for a house only to gift it to the woman who ended their marriage, he reminds himself of one pertinent fact.  In order to marry him, Daphne gave up a lucrative job at an auction house in London.  If she'd stayed, she'd probably be earning substantially more money than Jeffrey tends to see in his wage packet.

So he writes it all off to experience, and takes a kind of masochistic comfort in recognising that as a newly unmarried man his life seems to be back at a rather threadbare starting point.  (Also, he has a healthy private pension to look forward to.  If he can only make it to about sixty or so, he'll be laughing.)

He prepares tea, takes it through to the staff area and sets it down on the side table; he has now gone from secretary to tea-boy on this humbling afternoon.  Gladys has stretched her legs out and rested her head against the back of the sofa.  Her eyes are closed.  He is unsure whether she has fallen asleep.

He goes into the office, grimaces at the sight of the brown paper bag containing the paperback he bought and hides it in his desk drawer.  He collects the bag of Eccles cakes and goes back to the communal area.  Gladys stirs as he pours the tea.  A sigh.  A wince and a tired roll of her shoulders, and she sits up straighter.

"Are you all right?" he asks, as he prepares her tea as she prefers it.  "Still not sleeping?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she says.  "It's been a long season, in some ways."

"More than usual?"

"I don't know."  She sits forward and takes her tea.  "Maybe I'm getting too old for this.  But dealing with the likes of Sylvia is getting to be more of a grind, every single year."

Jeffrey takes a seat next to her, barely noticing the way he'd have chosen any other seat but this one only three days ago.  He sips at his tea.  It feels nice, talking with Gladys like this.  It's the first time they've really talked since Thursday.

He says, "Sylvia resents you.  Your achievements.  Your talents.  She's very jealous."

Gladys just says, "She thinks she should have my job."

"Yes, maybe she does, but _I_ think you should have mine."

She snorts.  "Joe Maplin doesn't give women senior management positions – not unless he's sleeping with them.  And for the record, I'm not sleeping with Joe Maplin."

"I'm relieved to hear it," he says dryly.  It's nice to rediscover his humour.  It's nice to be natural enough with someone to indulge it.  "Have an Eccles cake."

"Bowsham's?"

"Indeed."

"Then I shall."

There's a pause.  They drink tea and munch Eccles cakes.

Gladys shifts next to him and says, "What talents?"

"Um..."

"You said Sylvia's jealous of my talents.  What talents?"

"Oh."  He shrugs.  "You're better at the job than she is."

"Last time the campers tried to choose between us, we were tied," she points out.  "Fifty-fifty."

"Yes," Jeffrey agrees.  "And Sylvia's 'fifty' consisted mainly of male campers with, er, with–"

"With sweaty, itchy palms and their tongues hanging out?" Gladys suggests.

"That's one way of putting it."

Gladys nods.  Sips tea.  Then, lightly, she says, "So you're saying Sylvia's sexier than I am."

"Gladys!" he says, not sure if he wants to complain or castigate.

She gives a tired laugh and relaxes back against the sofa.  "Sorry.  Couldn't resist.  You know, that storm last Thursday seems to have blown the nerves right out of you."

(It did no such thing.  She still makes him nervous.  It's just that she makes him lots of other things as well.)

She leans against his shoulder, just like she did on the beach, and they are quiet for a while.  Gladys has learned, over the course of this summer, when not to push.

"I don't think I want to come back here next season," she says after a while.

"No?"

"Oh, it's not about you.  Well.  Not just that."  She fidgets with her teacup's handle.  "I've been thinking about this for a long time."

"This is a job you're very good at," he points out.

"For how much longer, though?  Jeffrey, I'm thirty-four, masquerading as twenty-six.  We can joke about it, but really, how much longer can I pull this off?"

He nods.  He can recognise how women, so much more than men, are valued for their youth and looks in the job market.  "All right, then," he says, setting down his tea.  He slides more comfortably into the sofa, his upper arm warm against Gladys's.  "Hypothetically, what do you want to do next?  There's no rules," he adds.  "Take the need for money, for lodgings, for-for-for everything that normally informs our decisions – take it all out of play.  Focus on what you truly want."

Gladys laughs: a rich, toe-curling sound even when it is directed _at_ him rather than shared with him.

"What?" he asks.

"Ohh, you are such a..."  She tails off, leaving him confused as to what he is being accused of.  "You don't get it, do you?" she says.  "People like me – we don't do hypotheticals.  Not like that.  For people like me, the answer to 'what do you want?' is _always_ about money and lodgings and all the boring essentials."  She sighs.  "What I want is to be in a steady job that earns me enough money to put a roof over my head and food on the table, and if I'm really lucky, to get a new pair of shoes every once in a while.  That's what I truly want, Jeffrey."

He feels chastened, and not for the first time on this afternoon.  "I see."

"I mean, I can tell you, hypothetically, that I want to be on stage at the Royal Opera House, but it isn't going to happen, is it?"

He's heard Gladys sing.  It really isn't.  (Though her voice is rather nice when she keeps to her range and doesn't try quite so hard.)

"You have marketable skills," he says.  "You can turn chaos into order.  You can plan and organise and administer.  You have a warmth when dealing with others that people will always respond to.  Present these skills in the right way and I can't imagine you would struggle to find work."

She turns her head to look at him, which makes him look at her.  Suddenly their faces are very close together.  Jeffrey swallows.

"Trying to get rid of me, are you?" she asks quietly.  She bites her lip.  "Get me a nice job, so you can feel better about turning your back on...on this.  On us."

Her mood has danced again, away from teasing, away from chastising.  She's unsure and she's a little bit frightened, and he recognises it in her eyes.  Perhaps because he's been feeling the same way for two days now.

He wants to kiss her.  It feels like the moment for a kiss.  He won't, of course; he promised himself that the next time he kisses her it will be with genuine promise.  He isn't yet ready to make any promises.

Except perhaps this one:

"I'm not turning my back," he says.  "But Gladys – I don't know what's going to happen, and it might take some time before I'm in any position to, er, to..."  He tails off.  He doesn't know the words that are right.

Gladys holds his gaze and reaches up to touch his face.  Her fingertips are soothing and stimulating in equal measure.

"I'll wait," she says simply.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is romantically interested in Gladys Pugh.  He is also romantically involved with her.  This has been the case for longer than either of them realised.

Perhaps it will all peter out.  Perhaps there's no future in it; not really.  But the thing with relationships is that they do not appear fully-formed; they grow.

Someone told him that, once.  It's true, of course.

~~~

**Sunday**

It is Jeffrey's day off, though he usually stays at the camp through to the end of the morning prayer service.  Not today.  He is out of the camp by ten past eight and on the first London-bound train.

Things have been happening too fast.  He wants a sense of distance from them.  He wants to catch up with himself.

He spends the late morning wandering around the British Museum: old things, reassuring things, familiar things.  He meets a former student of his for lunch in Bloomsbury.  Bill Rickson is doing very well for himself at the Institute of Archaeology, and Jeffrey is intrigued to discover whether time spent with a like-minded academic might rekindle his interest in his subject.

Bill never got on with Hugo Buxton, which makes him the perfect person to ask about a return to academia.  Would Jeffrey's name be considered, or dismissed out of hand?  Bill assures him that outside of Cambridge – and possibly St. Andrews, where Hugo Buxton's nephew is Rector – Buxton's influence is on the wane.  Bill reminds Jeffrey that Buxton wrote a scathing review for _The Archaeological Journal_ when Fort's book on the Turdaș-Vinča culture came out three years earlier.  Fort's subsequent rise and rise has left Buxton, for once, with egg on his face, both intellectually and politically.

It is reassuring to note that a modest academic role in another British university is something that has not slipped beyond Jeffrey's grasp.

Bill spends much of the lunch talking about a trip he made earlier that year to Madison in Wisconsin, where the state university occupies land rich in archaeological interest.  Jeffrey finds himself fascinated as Bill talks of a Native American 'effigy' burial mound in the shape of an animal spirit.

Then Bill says, "I got to know the Anthropology Chair over there quite well.  Nice chap.  Bit scatty.  He's looking for a new Archaeology Chair.  If you fancy a hop across the pond."

For a moment, Jeffrey considers this option.  It might be the fresh start he needs, thousands of miles away from Buxton-revenge and the politics of British academia.  A brand new country...and no chance of catching sight of Daphne and bloody Tewkesbury in the society pages.

Still.  Teaching again?  And who was to say that American universities were any less prone to back-stabbing and politicking than Cambridge?  And how could Gladys be a part of his life if he put an entire _ocean_ between the two of them?

"Can't do it, I'm afraid," he tells Bill.

"Are you sure?  I think you'd be a fit.  It's a cracking little city.  Lakeshore setting, nice architecture, pleasant climate."

"It sounds charming," Jeffrey acknowledges.  He clears his throat, feeling self-conscious.  "But there are, er, reasons for me to-to stay here."

Bill's eyes widen.  "Did you and Daphne sort yourselves out?  Oh, that's marvellous!  But, look here, you could easily take her along with you.  Some of the accommodation they have–"

"Daphne and I are divorced," Jeffrey says softly.

"Oh.  Oh, I'm, er, I'm sorry about that."  Bill's expression becomes shrewd, making Jeffrey regret the fact that Bill is a mere six years younger than he is, and that the hierarchical relationship that usually exists between professor and doctoral student was never that strong between them.  "You've met someone else, haven't you?"

"M-Y-O-B," Jeffrey says primly.

"Oh, _that's_ a yes, then.  What's her name?"

"M-Y-"

"Sorry!"  Bill holds up both hands, but his eyes are dancing.  "Seriously, Jeff, I'm delighted for you.  Hope it works out.  Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke."

The conversation steers away from Jeffrey's personal life – if it can yet be called that – and returns to archaeology.  And at some point over coffee, Bill ends up asking Jeffrey what Jeffrey asked Gladys yesterday: the practicalities aside, what does he want to do next?

Jeffrey shuts his mind to everything except his capacity for intellectual passion...

"I want to write a book on flint artefacts," he says.  "Late Upper Palaeolithic.  How the technology informed the evolving culture."

He pauses for a moment after this statement.  He has taken himself aback.

Bill blinks at him.  "So do it.  I think it'd be brilliant.  _I'll_ buy a copy."

Jeffrey sighs, and begins to offer all the reasons this back-burner of an idea has never been allowed to come to the fore.  "I need an income."

"Get an advance.  Routledge is starting to work on commissions for its academic portfolio."

"Won't be enough.  And I need access to collections, libraries–"

"You need a college affiliation, then.  Want me to ask at the Institute?  You're still the go-to man when it comes to palaeoecology.  Agree to a few guest lectures each term and they'll put you on the books."

Jeffrey feels a rush of hope before his common sense takes over.  The best advance he might be offered for a limited-appeal academic publication, coupled with the kind of stipend a college would offer him for a very-part-time role, will not provide enough of an income to maintain the living and travel expenses that his research will require.

"Still won't be enough," he says.  "Plus, I need, frankly, a-a Bill Rickson."

Bill frowns.  "Me?"

"You were an enormous help when I wrote 'Peat Stratigraphy of Rannoch Moor'."

"Only because you can't organise a bibliography to save your life."

"I know."

"Or a table of contents," Bill adds.

"I know that too."

"Or footnotes.  Or your own notes files, for that matter."

"Yes, thank you, Bill–"

"Or the basics of a travel itinerary."

"Which is why I need a Bill Rickson!"  Jeffrey sighs.  "Or some other poor student I can shanghai for the duration."

"These are problems you can solve," Bill points out.

"Only if money starts growing on trees," Jeff counters glumly.

They finish their coffee and part ways.  Bill promises to get in touch if he comes up with anything that might help.

Jeffrey meanders east and south through Bloomsbury, taking in bits of park in various squares as he goes, thinking, thinking.  In truth, he is trying to talk himself out of the idea that this book is worth pursuing.  It's been bubbling away inside his mind for almost twelve years.  It can bubble for a while longer.  He should just let it go.

But the thing of it is, it's the first time he's felt excited about something – intellectually, at least – in a long time.  He doesn't want to let it go.

(There _would_ be problems to solve.  He is not a problem-solver and he never has been.  But he knows someone who is.)

One foot in front of the other and he finds he is on Kingsway.  He cuts the corner before he gets to Aldwych and takes a turn around Lincoln's Inn on his way down to pick up Fleet Street.

(And does he really need an archaeologist to organise his notes, keep lists, plan his travelling, maintain his correspondence?  When he'd been writing the Rannoch book, Bill used to jovially complain that Jeffrey had turned him into a not-very-glorified secretary.)

At St. Pauls he finds a bench.  He has been walking for an hour, and he wants to pause.  His head is too full.

It's no good, of course.  If he can't expect to keep himself in lodgings, food and travel expenses, how can he expect to pay someone else a wage as well?  And he'd have to pay her a wage.  And would she really appreciate that, anyway?  One moment he's kissing her on a beach in the lashing rain, the next moment he's taking her on as his personal assistant?  Hardly the stuff of romance.

He decides that it is just as well he can't make this work financially.  Even if it was workable, it's prone to far too many complications.  Better to just write it off.

Jeffrey ignores the fact that this is not the first time he has found a nice, solid, reassuring reason which prevents him from doing something he actually quite wants to do.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is not an Entertainment Manager.  In fact he is not a manager, full stop.

(He is also the best Entertainment Manager Crimpton-on-Sea has known in recent memory.)

Jeffrey is an academic.  He is at home in colleges, libraries, museums.

(He hates lecturing, despises political in-fighting and feels nothing but bemused contempt for intellectual rivalries.)

Jeffrey likes to seize a subject, explore it, and then make all that he has learned available for others to discuss and develop and explore even further.

(His notes are a chaotic mess, his ability to plan is non-existent, and on those occasions when contacts are sought and collections are visited, his social skills are at best brittle.)

Jeffrey Fairbrother's life is riddled with contradictions.  He's become quite used to them.

~~~

**Monday**

Today – perhaps rather inevitably – Peggy makes another bid for Yellowcoat status.  Betty's news has permeated the staff, and Peggy has seized on the notion of a short-term opening in the team.

Jeffrey is struck by the careful way Gladys explains to Peggy that there is no such vacancy.  The current staff levels can cope during these tail-end weeks of the season, and Gladys points out that Tracey's regular job looking after the kid's club is no longer an issue, given the absence of youngsters.

Peggy is downcast, of course, but resigned.  Gladys is thoughtful and sad.

When Peggy has left the office, Jeffrey says, "What happened?"

Gladys frowns at him.  "What do you mean?"

"You and Peggy.  You've been different."  He considers.  "For a few weeks, now I come to think of it."

"Oh.  Well.  We had a long chat.  It was after all that business with her admirer.  You remember?  The dunes?"

He remembers.  "Is she all right?  I noticed last week she seemed less, er...effervescent."

"She's all right.  But it's hard for women, when the men in their lives make sweeping decisions that are supposed to be for the good of both."

Jeffrey feels a gurgle of petulance in his gut.  He thrusts his chin down and wraps his arms around his chest and can't quite tamp down on the urge to say, "Yes, well, sometimes a decision needs to be made."

"No argument.  But women like to feel they've been involved in the decision.  Not just had judgement passed on them."

He thinks about this.  He is trying to be more open-minded since his snobbery was laid bare on a smugglers' cove beach.  "I suppose sometimes we assume we have to be the sensible one."

Gladys rolls her eyes.  "Because women are all emotion?  No practical sense at all?"

His tightly crossed arms relax.  He lifts his chin, looks at her across the room where she has been filing correspondence.  Her eyes are on him, but her expression isn't accusing or challenging.  Just indulgent.  Understanding.  Maybe a little bit weary.

"Not all men have had the good fortune to meet you, Gladys," he says.

"And why would that make a difference?"

"Because sometimes that's what it takes to shake us out of our ingrained, misguided assumptions."

She smirks.  "I'll remember you said that.  If you ever try to make decisions for me rather than with me."

Though the discussion is supposed to be about Peggy, or at least an abstract consideration of stereotypical male and female behaviour, Jeffrey feels as if he has been bested again in an argument.

"Are you always going to run rings around me like this?" he asks.

Gladys arches a brow.  "I don't know.  Are you ever going to give me that copy of _Crime and Punishment_ in your desk?"

Ah.

He supposes that the answer to his question is 'yes'.

~~~

**Tuesday**

It's Daphne who ends up throwing things into disarray.  Well, Daphne and a student of Bill Rickson's.

Bill's telephone call comes through first.  He says he has been thinking about the book on flint technology, particularly with regard to the archaeological data obtained from the limestone caves of the Gower Peninsular.  His review prompted a discussion with a student about the smaller caves excavated in the early part of the century, after the Red Lady of Paviland's remains had been identified as Palaeolithic.  Several enthusiastic amateurs had waded in, hoping for fame and fortune.  This, unfortunately, had led to some burial sites being so ill-treated that they could not be properly catalogued.

Bill's student's grandfather was one such amateur.  He'd travelled to Wales and got talking to a local enthusiast who'd discovered a site and had been quietly excavating it.  Money exchanged hands, the local's research was handed over, and the student's grandfather then proceeded to stomp about, damaging the site beyond useful archaeological record.  (The student apparently feels so awful about this that he has undertaken an education in archaeology to try to make up for it.)

The cave itself was simply tutted over and then struck from the preservation order.  The student's grandfather, angered by the attitude of the authorities, omitted to hand over the research he had paid for: several flint artefacts, excavated and preserved, along with an entire series of journals and photographs.

And now Bill is excited because he's seen a couple of the photographs.  The flint-knapping from these artefacts is different to the knapping on those which were discovered within the Red Lady's burial site.

Jeffrey feels a buzz of excitement too: new knowledge always thrills him.  He asks if he might be allowed to meet the student and see the collection, even before his caution reminds him that this project has too many inherent problems.  Bill tells him that he can arrange that, yes, but there's a bit of an obstacle.

All the journals are in Welsh.

Jeffrey frets and jitters his way through the water-polo gala, before rain stops play for the afternoon and events move inside.  Gladys pulls out one of her ready-made emergency activities and an impromptu talent contest begins, pitting singers against magicians against jugglers against stand-up comics.  There's only so much Jeffrey can take, even when the campers are clearly having a ball, so he retreats to the office.

He finds the afternoon post arranged ready for his attention on his desk.  He shuffles through the envelopes and startles when he recognises Daphne's handwriting.  Inside the envelope is a letter and, astonishingly, a cheque for four thousand pounds.  He has to blink at it several times to be sure he is looking at a cheque containing quite that many zeroes.

The letter explains the cheque.  Daphne tells him it was always her intention to 'be fair', as she puts it, about the Cambridge townhouse.  The house apparently went on the market the moment he signed it over to her – four weeks ago – and found a buyer just three days later.  She got a very good price.  The sale was completed yesterday.  Daphne includes a breakdown of how she has worked out the division of the moneys, and Jeffrey can't fault its generosity.

Daphne notes, with what seems to be genuine apology, that her solicitor advised against revealing this plan before their divorce settlement was finalised so as not to 'further arouse' the suspicions of the divorce court judge.  Given the necessity for blame in divorce law, judges are mistrustful of agreements that seek genuine equity.  They would have asked questions, perhaps become sceptical about the 'infidelity' incident.  And Daphne points out, quite correctly, that Jeffrey is a terrible liar.

It all makes legal sense, he supposes.  Strategic sense.  Moral sense, perhaps, as well.  But he knows Daphne, and he knows what this is about.  She is acknowledging that, at a personal cost to himself, he gave her her freedom.  He shouldered the burden of guilt and blame; he allowed her to preserve her reputation.

This is a thank-you.

He reads the letter twice.  Sentiment and nostalgia make his head swirl.  For a painful few minutes, Jeffrey is reminded of the reasons he fell in love with Daphne Prescott in the first place.  When the feelings get too much he replaces the letter and cheque in the envelope, slides the envelope into his inside jacket pocket, and forces himself to attend to the rest of the afternoon post.

He is suddenly well off.  Even conservatively invested, this cash sum will more than support a two-year sabbatical.  His nice, reassuring reason has been blitzed.  That's the second time in recent weeks that Daphne has done this to him.

Jeffrey spins around on his office chair and looks out the window, directing his gaze beyond the low, flat roof of the building adjacent, over towards the cloud-dotted sun.  The rain is clearing up, and a rainbow cleaves the skyline over to the west.

He sighs his irritation at it.  He is beginning to get truly fed up with all these ridiculous weather metaphors.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is not a spontaneous man.  He never has been and he never will be.  Quite simply, he refuses to rush into things.

Unless, of course, the 'thing' is an abrupt and, some might say, illogical career change.  Or, come to think of it, a passionate embrace on a rain-swept beach.

Everyone is allowed their inconsistencies, though.

~~~


	5. Moonlight Becomes You

**Wednesday**

Jeffrey is avoiding Gladys.  He knows he is, and he knows it is bothering her, and he can't help it.  Every minute he spends alone in her company brings him closer to the moment when he blurts everything out.  And he can't do that.  He can't risk it.  He needs to dot a whole plethora of 'i's and cross a plenitude of 't's before he is ready for that.

The photographer is on site, touring around and taking pictures.  Jeffrey asks Gladys to make herself available to the man in case he needs assistance.  Both of them pretend not to notice that Jeffrey's request is prompted by the way he wants her out of the office.

He can barely stomach his lunch.  His guts are churning with indecision.

In the afternoon he takes a turn around Roger McDonald's pride and joy: the rose gardens.  Some of the older campers are out here, strolling, enjoying the sunshine and the blooms.  Between Fred Quilley's contribution to the soil from his stables, and McDonald's green thumb, the plants are glorious.  Pinks, peaches, delicate yellows, and one rich velvet crimson that looks dark and seductive and turns his thoughts in the very direction he is trying to avoid.

He sits on one of the wooden arbours that McDonald has constructed around the site.  Some campers bid him a good afternoon; some try to enter into a gardening discussion with him.  Alas, his knowledge of soil is not horticultural.  Plant macrofossils he can discuss.  Blackspot and mildew and so forth are beyond him.

Damn it all, he wants to write his book!  The potency of the feeling has knocked him for six.  He wants this project in the same way that he wanted to escape Cambridge.  It's a wanting that borders on need.

But the practicalities elude him: where to base himself, how long a lease to take, how to plan his research.  How to present himself as a potential Associate Professor; how to find the time to plan guest lectures.  How to deal with Bill Rickson's student; what to do about the original Welsh amateur who probably deserves acknowledgement.  It's intolerable.  Everything that needs to be dealt with piles up in a teetering stack, and each time he tries to examine one constituent part it feels like the whole thing will crash to the ground.

And all this is before he even considers the question of Gladys.  Because if he invites her to be a part of this venture, what then?  Does he offer a wage and suggest she sort out her own lodging?  Does he take a house somewhere peaceful and isolated and conducive to intellectual pursuits, and offer her a room in it, never mind the cost to both of their reputations?  Does he bypass the reputation issue by proposing to her, right away?

No, no, no, no.  He is not ready to marry.  He might _never_ be ready.

And if he is never ready, how can it possibly be fair to Gladys that he drag her along on some book-writing project?  Her organisational skills and her fluency in Welsh would no doubt be useful, but in truth she would not be with him because of a job.  She is in love with him, and she has never been coy about that, and he has already promised her that he will not turn his back.

But he isn't ready.  And even if he _felt_ ready, how could he trust that feeling?  Eight years ago he felt ready, and he married, and it all ended in failure.  Feelings could be treacherous blighters.  They were only too happy to steer you awry.

So what are his intentions, here?  Use her skills and then admit he can offer her nothing of himself?

"Damn it," Jeffrey mutters at the roses.

Perhaps he should just write his book the way he sees fit.  No Gladys.  He could engage a translator for the journals; he can afford that now.  He could engage someone from the Institute to keep his footnotes in order and plan his research visits.  And in the meantime, Gladys can make her own free choice about what she does after the season ends.  Perhaps she will return here next April, perhaps not.  That's her business.  She's already told him that women don't approve of men making decisions on their behalf.  So the choice should be her own.

Yes, that makes sense.  Not that he is turning his back on her, of course.  They could...they could write.  To each other.

Pen-pals?

Well, damn it, she said she'd wait!

He closes his eyes against the sunshine and leans back, and he is not beyond a disgusted, "Ugh!" at himself.

Gladys says, "And what have these beautiful roses ever done to you, then?"

He manages not to yelp, but only just.  When he has straightened himself on the bench, reminded himself which way is up and which is down and remembered to breathe a few times, he sees that Gladys is sitting demurely nearby.  How long she has been there is anyone's guess.

"I, er, thought you were with the photographer," he says.

Gladys nods over to their right.  Two flowerbeds away the photographer is taking pictures of roses.

There's a pause.

"Is there something wrong, Jeffrey?" she asks.  Her voice is careful and neutral.

"Of course not," he says automatically.  He isn't ready to discuss this.  He doesn't know how.  He has spent the last two hours thinking about all the things he got wrong in his marriage, and how much a creature of habit he is, and how – therefore – it seems predictable that he'll make the same mistakes again if he is ever given the chance.

She stands up.  The photographer has finished with the roses and has waved at her.

"When you're ready, I'll be here," she says, and smiles.  It's a sad smile, uncertain, but it's there.

Gladys walks away without waiting for his acknowledgement.  Maybe she isn't expecting one.

Jeffrey wants to be ready.  He just isn't quite sure it's in him.

He misses his lovely, solid, reassuring reasons.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is not a man given to forming friendships.

Perhaps, now friendship has come upon him unexpectedly,  he might therefore be excused for the way he doesn't have the first clue how to behave.

~~~

**Thursday**

For the second morning running, Jeffrey doesn't swim.  He really doesn't need the additional sense of exposure.

It's Gladys's day off.  She comes into the office just before the morning meeting, looks him in the eyes, then frowns at what she sees there and leaves without a word.

She is probably going to Colchester.  He is pathetically grateful for this distance.

He's hurting her.  He doesn't mean to, but he is.  Unfortunately the only way to fix that is to come clean about all his turbulent thoughts and ideas and confusions, many of which will potentially hurt her even more.

Storms are supposed to clear the air, he finds himself musing mid-morning.  The very notion is laughable.  Everything seemed so much simpler on that rain-swept beach.

Halfway through the afternoon he is able to remove himself from the campers and the fun and the need to be congenial.  Alone in the office he tries to busy himself with paperwork.  His pen runs out and he needs to find an alternative because his stock of refill cartridges is in his chalet.  Jeffrey opens his desk drawer to look for a stray biro.

Inside the drawer, in the same place where he hid a copy of _Crime and Punishment_ for a couple of days, sits a well-read copy of _North and South_.  Its dust-jacket is worn and has a tear mended with Sellotape on one corner.  Heart beating a little too quickly, he takes it out and opens the front cover.

 _Gladys,_  
_Pen-blwydd hapus, cariad,_  
_Dad X_

Jeffrey holds the book carefully and leans back, looking at it.  Was it only a week ago that he and Gladys talked into the early evening on that beach?  Once he'd started asking her questions about herself, he'd found he couldn't stop.  She'd laughed about it, teasing him, calling him the Grand Inquisitor.

She'd told him about her father's hospitalisation following an accident with a runaway trolley at the mine.  She'd told him about the way she'd taken to spending two evenings a week at the cottage hospital in Treorchy, reading aloud to him, slowly working her way through Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas because her father's head injury had left him unable to read for longer than a few minutes at a time.  Literature was something she and her father had shared.  She hadn't called it 'literature', though.  She'd called it 'adventures'.

There is a piece of paper in the book that seems to serve as a bookmark.  Jeffrey parts the pages there, and the paper falls into his lap.  When he lifts it up, he sees Gladys's neat handwriting on one side:

_"Take care.  If you do not speak – I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way.  Send me away at once, if I must go;"_

He presses his lips hard together and replaces the bookmark, then – reverently – the book.  This is one of Gladys's treasures, a reminder of the love between father and daughter.  He does not deserve to be trusted with it.

It hurts, that Gladys trusts him anyway.  It hurts almost as much as the notion of sending her away.

Ten minutes later – time he spends staring blankly at the office door – he retrieves the book from his drawer and thumbs through one section.  His memory might be imperfect, but he's sure he can recall...

There.

_"It seemed as though he gave way all at once; he was so languid that he could not control his thoughts; they would wander to her; they would bring back the scene – not of his repulse and rejection the day before but the looks, the actions of the day before that.  He went along the crowded streets mechanically, winding in and out among the people but never seeing them, almost sick with longing for that one half-hour – that one brief space of time when she clung to him, and her heart beat against his – to come once again."_

He finds a biro and writes the words on a blank piece of paper.

Then, beneath them, he writes:

_'When can we talk?'_

He sits there, pen poised, wondering what more he might add.  It occurs to him that communicating this way is much easier than talking face to face.  Then he reminds himself of shoulder touching shoulder, and the soft tickle of her hair against his chin, and the way her curves move with every breath.  There is, after all, something to be said for face to face.

He folds his note and slips it between the pages of the book, just where the quotation is from.  Then he stands up.  He needs to find Peggy, and he needs access to Gladys's chalet because he is not leaving this treasure anywhere it might be manhandled.

Jeffrey is aware, now, that he has been behaving ridiculously.  He has turned a small problem into an overwhelming one.  He knows what he wants, and he has been given the means to achieve it.  He even has a trusted friend with whom he can sort out the details.

Gladys has already told him not to make decisions for her.  She has also demonstrated that she is on his side.  Actually she's been doing that for most of the season, every which way that she can.

Jeffrey thinks it is probably time he stopped being such a neurotic and cowardly idiot.

~~~

"I never told anyone, you know," Peggy says as she accompanies him along the row of chalets, a bundle of clean towels in her arms that she has organised as their 'cover story' in case anyone sees them.  "About last week."

Jeffrey hasn't even thought about that since driving away from the camp last Thursday.  "Oh," he says.  "Yes, I, er, appreciate your discretion.  Very much."

Peggy's tact is surprising, though perhaps less so in the light of the conversation Gladys told him she and Peggy shared.  Peggy confirms this by adding, "Me and Gladys have sort of come to understand each other a bit better."

"Yes, she told me you'd had a talk.  After, um, after..."

"After I got chucked over," Peggy says blithely.  She looks around, her furtiveness rather overblown and theatrical, before unlocking Gladys's door.  "So you and her are an item now, are you?  Took you long enough."

Jeffrey shuffles.  "That might be overstating things."

"Four months!"

"Oh.  No.  Not the, er, time it's taken.  I mean the being an 'item'."

Peggy's eyes narrow accusingly.  "So you're leading her up the garden path?"  She locks the door again and puts her back to it firmly.  "All due respect, Mr. Fairbrother, but I won't be a party to that kind of caper."

"I am doing no such thing," Jeffrey says firmly, even though his behaviour towards Gladys over the last day or two probably fails to back up his statement.

"So you're not an item.  And you're not leading her on.  But you want to leave a gift in her chalet and you get a dopey-eyed look when you hear her name.  Have I got it straight?"

Jeff draws breath, lets it out, sags against the wall.  "I'm alarmed to discover that 'dopey-eyed' is in my repertoire."

Peggy tuts at him, turns around and unlocks the door again.  "Why do you educated fellas have to make everything so complicated?"

"Well, we have to justify the school fees somehow," he mutters, forgetting for a moment that his arid sense of humour does not always find an appreciative audience at Crimpton.

"Eh?"

"Never mind."

"Well go on, then."  She gestures him into Gladys's chalet.

Jeffrey finds a prominent place for the book on Gladys's bedside table.  He straightens up, trying not to be distracted by the glimpse of nightdress peeking out from underneath Gladys's pillow.  "Yes.  Right then."

Peggy leans her weight on one leg and puts a hand to her hip.  "Are you finished?"

"Yes.  Thank you."

He comes outside.  Peggy locks the door.

"Funny, in't it?" Peggy says as they walk away, both of them trying to appear inconspicuous and failing miserably.

"What's that?" Jeffrey asks.

"I've seen even more of you than she has.  And you never left _me_ a love-note."

Peggy smiles broadly at him, pokes a hand out of her towel bundle and gives him an odd little wave, then she disappears down the path to the linen store.

~~~

Gladys comes bustling into the dining hall at a little after half past six that evening.  She's come straight from the bus-stop;  Jeffrey knows this because she is still clutching a paper bag printed with the C&A logo.  She glances around, meets his gaze and pinches at her lips, then she makes her way over to where Ted and Spike are sitting.

Opposite him, Betty says, "Oh dear.  Looks like you're in bad books, Jeff."

Jeffrey turns his attention back to his cottage pie.  "Deservedly, at the moment."

Betty makes an interested noise that prompts him to look up.  "Really?" she says.

He raises his eyebrows but doesn't say anything.  His privacy in this camp may not be something he can always ensure, but he doesn't need to advertise his personal life to all and sundry.

Betty gives a dramatic sigh.  Then she looks around cautiously, leans closer over the table and says, "Sylvia's going to be furious.  I don't suppose you'd consider waiting until I've left, would you?  Before you let Sylvia find out, I mean.  Otherwise I'm not going to hear the end of it."

"You're leaving the day after tomorrow," he points out.

"Then it isn't so much to ask, is it?"

They pause, looking at each other.  Betty smiles widely.  Jeffrey, a touch embarrassed, smiles back.

She shakes her head at him.  "Oh, Jeff.  If I'd been ten years older," she muses.

He isn't sure if he should be offended by that.

~~~

In the ballroom that evening, Jeffrey restricts his alcohol intake to a single Martini.  (He has learned, through bitter experience, not to accept drinks from staff or campers that he has not witnessed being poured...or at least, not to drink them.  He has mastered the art of sipping without sipping on those occasions when subterfuge is required.)

He half-expects Gladys to turn up, day off or no.  But she does not.  Perhaps, like him, there are some things she'd prefer to do out of view of the gossips.  Or perhaps she has already decided that he is far more trouble than he is worth.

Ted starts to wind the evening down around five to eleven.  Good Night Campers is over and done with by ten past.  Jeffrey collects his hot milk and then wanders back to his chalet.

There is a note on his threshold, pushed under his door.  He reads:

_'Rose garden gazebo.  Wrap up.  I've got the cocoa.'_

The sense of relief almost winds him.  Jeffrey grabs his coat from the back of the door, then he collects the half-bottle of Martell he keeps in his underwear drawer.  He slips out of the chalet as quietly as he is able.

Gladys is right, of course.  Yvonne and Barry are all too adept when it comes to glasses pressed to walls.

~~~

The gazebo is an octagonal structure built into the corner of the rose garden.  It is sanded smooth and painted white, and has wide benches around three quarters of its circumference.  At any given time during the day it will usually play host to at least three couples and – earlier in the season, at any rate – several fractious children who are very annoyed that their parents have opted for a change of scenery from the poolside.

In the moonlight it is quiet and isolated and breathtakingly romantic.

Gladys sits at one octagonal corner, twisted sideways so her shoulder leans against the back support of the bench.  She's wrapped up in her coat, feet up on the bench, hugging her knees as she gazes out over the moonlit shrubs.  The scant illumination paints her in black and white: pale skin and dark eyes.  She has never looked more like that exotic film star.  Jeffrey decides that if he makes it up the steps into the gazebo proper without tripping over his own feet, it will be a minor miracle.

(Miracles, it seems, happen.)

"Hello," she says softly.  "I missed you."

He finds himself a seat a little way along from her feet and sets his bottle down on his other side.  He leans forward, hands clasped between his knees so he doesn't fidget, not meeting her eyes: the very epitome of defensive and awkward.  "You were only gone a day," he points out.

"You've been gone two," she counters.  "Two and a bit, actually."

He sighs.  "I think," he says to his own thumbs, "that I am already demonstrating my rather obvious shortcomings."

"Oh?"

"I-I mean to say – it must be clear to you now.  Exploring any kind of involvement with me is going to be, er..."

"Wildly exciting?"

"Problematic."

"Oh, that too."  Gladys's tone is almost breezy.

"Yes.  Well."

There's a pause.

Gladys caves first.  "What happened, Jeffrey?  Did someone ask about me?  Make you feel self-conscious?"

"Oh!  No, nothing like that.  Well, I suppose Peggy did, a bit.  And Betty cottoned on when I was watching you in the dining hall.  But she's more bothered about getting away from here before Sylvia finds out."

"Finds out what?" Gladys asks.

It's a fair question, because after the last few days she has earned some clarity on where she stands.  He manages to look her way.  Her head is resting against the back of the bench, tilted slightly as she studies him.  Moonlight glimmers in her dark eyes.

His breath hitches.  "Oh, Gladys," he murmurs.

She smiles.  Apparently he has said enough, simply in the tone of his voice.  "Cocoa?" she offers, nodding to the bench behind her where a thermos flask stands ready.

He grabs his bottle.  "Cognac?"

They decide on the latter.  The flask provides twin plastic cups.  It's make-do-and-mend, but his summer at Crimpton-on-Sea has made Jeffrey more appreciative of make-do-and-mend than he was before.

The brandy warms his lips and loosens his tongue.

"I'm sorry," he says.  "There's a great deal I need to say to you, and every time I try to put it into the proper order in my head I-I come up with reasons why it's all wrong."

Gladys nods.  "Maybe you should just start?  Try it, and see where we go?"

"I don't want to hurt you," he says.  "Or pressure you, or offend you, or take you for granted or presume on your generosity and-and–"

He stops, startled by the way Gladys lifts her feet over his lap and shuffles closer.  Her legs rest against his middle, her arm slides around his neck.

"Deep breath," she advises.  He follows the advice instinctively because the rest of his brain is still processing her new proximity.  "Now.  All that business about not wanting to take advantage – why don't we just take it as read?  We'll _always_ take it as read.  I trust you that way, remember?"

He feels choked.  His capacity for sentiment is beginning to overwhelm him.  "I don't deserve your trust," he says.

"Well that's tough luck, isn't it?  Because you've got it anyway.  Now.  Start again."

He wets his lips.  His left arm goes around her waist because it's the most natural place to put it when she is all but sitting in his lap.  Though his pulse has quickened, he finds himself relaxing.  (Even his own anatomy is contradicting itself now.)

"Right then.  Yes.  Well – I've come into some money," he says.  "Quite unexpectedly.  And I want to write a book.  I've been thinking about it for years, and now it feels like the perfect – I mean, it's my subject, my passion, and there'll be so much research, but I want to be able to do it without drowning myself in the absurd one-upmanship that...and I've got piles of notes, but most of it's at Hazlemere and it's probably all in a jumble."  His words gather pace as all the things he needs to discuss begin to pour out of him.  "And there are some journals.  They might be important.  They're in Welsh.  It's like the stars are aligning, Gladys, and if that isn't the most ridiculous poppycock then I don't know...but I _need_ you in my life.  I need you because you challenge me and you confound me and you make me feel like I might be more than the neurotic old stuffed-shirt I always thought I was, but-but, damn it, I'm scared because I've made a mess of things before and I don't want to do it again, so I tell myself it's all right because I don't really need anyone.  But that's not true.  _God_ , it's not true.  Sometimes it feels as if I've spent half my life lying to myself.  And there's so much I need to sort out, there are a hundred different problems – where to live, where to work, how to approach people – and I'm no good at problems, not the ones that aren't all about intellectual theory or...oh, god, I'm making a complete mess of this, aren't I?"

He stops talking.  He is out of breath, as though he's been running.  Gladys just looks at him, patient and a touch bemused.  He waits.  He waits long enough that his breathing settles down.

It's only when he feels calmer that Gladys smiles at him and says, "Well then.  Sounds to me like we're going to need a list."

Her unfazed response shocks him for a moment, before he finds himself laughing.  Tension begins to drain from his body; the sensation is quite, quite physical.  "Yes.  Yes, it does, doesn't it?"

"So we'll start tomorrow.  After my tennis class in the afternoon – it's always quiet on a Friday.  So we'll have some time."

"Right."

She pulls back, looking at him.  "Do you doubt we can sort this out?  Between the two of us?"

"I have no doubts about you, Gladys.  But I doubt I can be much use.  I, er, seem to have this habit of making mountains out of molehills."

"You're better at solving problems than you think.  Look at how you saved Mrs. Baxter's cottage.  Or how you helped that nice couple whose savings had been robbed."

He's almost annoyed that she can point to these inconsistencies.  "Are you always going to be so supportive?" he says, and it sounds like a complaint.

Gladys shrugs.  "Probably.  It's not difficult to see the good in you, Jeffrey."

"I don't understand."  He sighs, leans right back on the wide bench and pulls Gladys inadvertently with him, though she doesn't seem to object.  "I'm hard work, Gladys.  I'm set in my ways; I have no demonstrable domestic skills; I over-analyse to the point of madness."

"I know."

"And my hairline is receding.  And-and my mouth is all skew-whiff."

She sounds exasperated when she says, "So?"

"So what on earth do you see in me?" he asks plaintively.  "Because it can't poss–"

"Oh, do shut up, you silly, great, big-brained, bruised-to-bits, utterly, utterly _wonderful_ man!"

She leans in and kisses him.  Her lips taste of cognac.  He puts down the plastic cup he has been sipping brandy from; perhaps he even manages to set it safely on the other side of the bench.  Then he pulls her closer.  Gladys is in his arms, and he couldn't push her away if their lives depended on it.  Their kisses grow passionate, desperate, as if the week that has passed since the last one has been far too much to bear.  This embrace lasts several minutes, before the need to catch their breath requires them to pause.

"Gladys," he says hoarsely.

"Hum," she manages, as if her lips are so heavy with their kisses that she cannot make them function.  Her head drops against his shoulder.

If they stay here much longer, Jeffrey is concerned he's going to end up testing his sense of restraint.  "Are we moving too fast?" he muses, as much to the clear night air as to her or to himself.

"Hmm."

He closes his eyes and shakes his head.  "I shouldn't be thinking these thoughts.  Not about you.  Not when I know I can't...but even if I could, if I was ready to–....I mean, look at my history!"

"You're worried I'll leave you?"

"I'm worried I'll give you no other choice."

She sighs against him.  Snuggles close: warm, soft curves in the cool moonlit air.  "Well, _I'm_ worried you'll wake up one morning and realise you were right," she counters.

"Right about what?"

"That I'm not good enough for you.  Not clever enough."

"Oh, no, Gladys–"

"That's my fear," she says.  "Like you have yours."

He considers this.  "I think I understand."  Either she is telling him that his fears are just as absurd as her own clearly are, or she is telling him that when it comes to the things they are afraid of, all they can do is trust each other.  Both options seem rather uplifting.

They are quiet in their embrace for a while.

"Together, then?" he tentatively suggests.

"I think so."

"Will you tell me when I make mistakes?"

"I will.  Will you?"

"Yes."  He frowns.  "And if I tell you you're making a mistake and that turns out to be wrong because it was _my_ mistake, then–"

"Oh _fy nuw_ , do I have to kiss you again to stop that brain of yours running away with itself?"  Her head lifts so she can send him a mock-glare.

He smiles his skew-whiff smile. "Well, it, er, seems to work."

"And what about moving too fast?"

"Ah.  Yes.  Good point."

She rests her head again.  He tightens his embrace.  She sighs contentment.

She's right, of course.  The first time he makes love to Gladys, Jeffrey promises himself that he will not subject them to the risk of splinters.  There will be comfort, and warmth, and privacy, and rather less in the way of distant fox-barking and owl-hooting.  And he will take his time, because both of them deserve that.  He imagines her sitting beside him in a softly lit room, her eyes nervous but oh-so-trusting as he reaches tremulous hands to unbutton her blouse and slowly reveal the–

"Oh lord," he whispers, and the sound catches in his throat.

"Jeff?"

"Thinking ahead."

"Hmm."  It's half a laugh, that 'hmm'.  "Join the club."

"Really?"

"Oh, very, _very_ really."

It occurs to Jeffrey that he is actively undertaking some planning on this issue.  Perhaps Gladys's skills are beginning to permeate his own.  (Osmosis, possibly, given how closely they are cuddled up.)  Maybe he should borrow further from Gladys's organisational skills and make a list.  An exotic list of all the places he wants to–

"Have I ever told you about my interest in the palynology of sediment deposits?" he says abruptly.

She lifts her head in surprise.  "Pally-what?"

"It's the study of dust.  I'm very dusty.  Hadn't you noticed?"  There is a tinge of desperation in his voice.

"Can't say I had," Gladys says.

"Dusty, and-and dull."

"No – never noticed."

"I like pollens," he declares.  "Spores.  Um – dinocysts."

"Dust?" she hazards.

"Microfossils.  They, er, they, er, they tell us a lot."

"Well there's lovely.  Jeffrey, are you having some kind of breakdown?"

He shifts uncomfortably.  "Actually I am trying to distract myself."

"From what?"

"That is a patently ridiculous question coming from the curvacious woman currently in my arms."

"Oh."  Her eyes narrow.  "I see."

He swallows hard.  "One can extract microfossils from sedimentary rock either chemically or using a technique involving ultrasonics."

Gladys leans in closer to him.  "Know something, Jeffrey?"  She lowers her voice until she hits that mellifluous, seductive register that seems to be the same frequency that makes his nerve-endings vibrate, and in the most delicious way.  "You're incredibly sexy when you talk fossils.  And dust.  Any of your -ology words, in fact."  She leans in until her lips brush his jaw line.  "I'd make you blush, telling you what your lecture-talk does to every inch of my skin..."

Well, that's it, then.  He's never going to be able to say the word 'palynology' again without experiencing a surge of arousal.  His potential for giving guest lectures just became a lot more awkward.

"All right, I concede.  You win," he says.  "I am undistracted."

There's a pause.  They look at each other.  Jeffrey's chest is heaving, and his upper lip is beaded with perspiration that is cooling in the night air.  Gladys's eyes are bright with her teasing.

But she takes pity on him.  "Maybe we should call it a night.  And tomorrow we'll make our lists and make some decisions."

"We should stop getting ahead of ourselves.  Yes."

She touches his face and smiles a trusting smile.  "I'm glad my book-message worked, though."

"So am I.  Feel free to employ such, er, countermeasures next time I get myself in a flap."  He feels rueful.  "Because it'll probably happen again."

"Maybe next time I'll just throw the book at your head."

"If you do that, use a different book.  That one's important."

"Or you could just talk to me."

A novel idea indeed.  Jeffrey closes his eyes and touches his forehead to Gladys's, and he says, "'Oh brave new world, that has such people in't!'"

"Yes, well, wait till you meet my mother.  Then we'll see how brave the world looks."

"Wait till you meet mine," he retorts.

They pull back.  Smile.

"Let go, or kiss me again," Gladys says.

"That seems a fairly obvious choice."

"Only if you want to make love in a gazebo."

He huffs a sigh and lets her go.  It seems that there are downsides to having an eminently practical nature.

They walk back to the chalets hand in hand.  Jeffrey doesn't even care if anyone sees them.

~~~

Jeffrey Fairbrother is a sexual being.  This should come as no surprise, since he is also one hundred per cent flawed and confused and contradictory human.

It is conventional wisdom that conservative men in buttoned-up tweed are probably less than adventurous when it comes to matters of physical intimacy.

It is also conventional wisdom that still waters run deep.

Whatever the truth turns out to be for Jeffrey Fairbrother, he is assured of one thing at the very least:

He'll end up contradicting himself at some point.

~~~

**Friday**

The evening in the Hawaiian ballroom goes on until almost midnight.  The campers want to make the most of their holiday's final night of celebration.

After Good Night Campers the entertainment staff adjourn to the milk bar, where they've agreed an extension with the serving staff.  For an hour, music plays on the record player that Spike has organised.  Drinks are served, dances are danced, jokes are shared and tears are shed.  It is Betty's leaving party.

Sylvia is quiet and withdrawn.  For all her alpha-dog antics, Betty is her closest friend and will be missed.  Jeffrey asks Sylvia to dance and tries to find some words of comfort.  He feels a hypocrite, though, because he knows that in one more week he will also be saying goodbye to Sylvia, probably forever.

Gladys – having spent almost two hours that afternoon proving that paper and a pen and an organised mind will allow for the ready solution of most problems – is avoiding him at the party.  He knows why.  She's still convinced that any public demonstration of their new closeness will unsettle him, perhaps even prompt a further bout of withdrawal.

She isn't entirely wrong.  He will never be at home in front of an audience.  But on the other hand, as he looks around the milk bar, he feels oddly comfortable.  These people are, he realises, his friends.  Not close friends, not trusted friends – indeed, some of them he would hardly trust as far as he could throw them – but they are friends nonetheless.  Friendship must come in degrees; it is not something that either exists or does not exist.

He dances with Betty, and wishes her all the best, and then he tells her he's sorry but he has to do something she won't approve of.

Then he asks Gladys to dance with him, and even as she is still blinking her surprise and wondering how to gauge their closeness, he draws her near and closes his eyes and murmurs into her ear, "Well that's it, I'm afraid.  We're both of us going to have to leave for good, next week.  I think the troops might have just, er, cottoned on."

She pulls back, big dark eyes that seem incapable of guile, and her smile is slow.  "Maybe we should give them a bit of a show?" she suggests in the tone that vibrates his nerve-endings.  "Just to be sure."

He hesitates.  He swallows hard, and feels his face get warm.  She notices, unsurprised, then smiles more widely and settles into a relatively chaste dance with him.

Of course, for all his contradictions, he is still Jeffrey Fairbrother.

~~~~~~


End file.
